


say the word and i'll part the sea

by SeptemberSevertana



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality, Discussions of grief, Galra Keith (Voltron), Hunk is amazing at feelings, Let's talk about how much I want my characters to be emotionally healthy, M/M, Mind Meld, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Oblivious Shiro (Voltron), Past Drug Use, Physical symptoms of emotional problems, Season/Series 03, Spanish Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-30 05:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15089864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeptemberSevertana/pseuds/SeptemberSevertana
Summary: In which Keith is still searching for Shiro, the Black Lion steps in, reality boundaries are crossed, and no one knows where the Galra!Keith came from.





	1. only breathing with the aid of denial

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the initial concept before Season Six aired (or whatever the equivalent is on Netflix), so Shiro's whereabouts are more subjective. Yes, the Black Lion did save him, but the clone doesn't enter the picture at all. I love dimension/reality-jumping stories, so I decided to write one of my own. :) I hope you guys enjoy. 
> 
> Story title is from "Sit Next To Me" by Foster The People; chapter title is from "You're Crashing, But You're No Wave" by Fall Out Boy.

Debris.

Shards of metal littered the area like airborne sand in a desert storm.

Keith lit up a sector of space with his searchlight. Everything looked silver; there was no way to discern what was debris and what could be Shiro without combing through every ounce of footage at 10⁴ times zoom. And he would; but right now, he saw nothing.

"Take us home, Red."

He'd been going out for weeks, analyzing every piece of visual data and scanning hundreds of thousands of kilometers of space junk. Lately, Keith had had to spread out his search range; the battle's direct three-dimensional volume only covered a portion of how far the ship remnants and other wreckage had traveled. Shiro could be on any one of those remnants, drifting among the asteroids in the belt a hundred kilometers from his current range. (He could be dead.)

But that was irrelevant until Keith found solid evidence.

He patted Red's leg on his way out of the hangar and silently thanked her for putting up with him. She got restless more often, temperamental as she was, but she still let him fly her to the same part of space every day just to sit still and analyze camera footage.

Walking into the common area, he quickly shuffled away from where Pidge and Hunk were working and looked for food. "How's the search coming?" Coran asked with his usual boisterousness. Keith winced at the noise but Hunk and Pidge didn't look up from their computers.

"Not well," Keith replied shortly, grabbing a bowl of plain food goo from the counter and curling up in the corner of the sofa.

"If anyone can survive the depths of space mostly intact, Shiro can!" Coran loped over and made a move to put his hand on Keith's shoulder, but ended up resting it lightly on the back of the sofa. "He would find a way," he said, softer. "Leaving the team...I don't think he could do that."

"It doesn't matter what he can or can't do. I will find him." Keith abruptly stabbed his spoon into his food goo and took a large bite.

Coran frowned a little and walked away. Since Coran knew about Keith's search missions, Allura probably knew as well, and it was only a matter of time before he'd be on the other end of her pitying stares. Being a part of a team like Voltron meant knowing everything about everyone: the castle was too small and there were only seven people (six now). Not to mention, the freaking telepathic mice _gossiped_. Mice were not supposed to gossip, period. Few secrets stayed sacred for long, point, the few days it took everyone to learn Pidge's relation to Sam and Matt. But he wouldn't be able to stand Lance's jokes and Pidge and Hunk's overbearing nature and Allura's goddamn pitying stares, so he kept his mouth shut. Hopefully, Coran would do the same.

It took nearly 45 minutes for Hunk to look up from whatever complicated engineering problem he was handling and notice him with "Well, look who's back. There's leftover food goo-"

"Yeah thanks, I had some." Keith motioned at Hunk with his empty bowl and stood up to put it in the sink.

"We have a diplomatic meeting with several members of the Alliance tonight. You might want to put on a more pleasant expression," Pidge said bluntly, pushing their glasses up.

Keith groaned. "I'm not useful there."

"You're telling us, we are very aware of how bad you are in any conversation involving tact," Hunk replied, wincing as Keith turned a death glare on him.

"If Voltron needs me to fight, I'll fight."

"This is a different battle," Pidge said with a sigh. "The more planets that trust us and listen to us, the easier it will be to take on the rest of the Galra Empire. We can't fight by ourselves, the odds are too risky even having the lions and the castle backing us up. Rebel sects like the Blade of Marmora ensure that we always have some backup for our frankly insane plots."

"And it also means less chance of us floating frozen and alone in the vacuum of space," Hunk added. Keith closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath.

"He didn't mean it like that," Pidge said, briskly grabbing their laptop and dragging Hunk bodily from the room. "The dinner is at 1600 vargas. Try to be civil, Keith."

* * *

 

He'd shouted at all of the people at the table. Of course, he had. Keith slumped face-first onto his cot and screamed into his pillow.

Keith had told the truth; what else did the leaders want? Voltron needed five paladins, there were only four, ergo, Voltron couldn't form. The most powerful weapon in the galaxy didn't work and Shiro...well, he wasn't coming back. Everyone had to learn to fight for themselves, including him. Keith wanted to live in the world where finding and saving Shiro was a matter of simple search and rescue, but that world only existed inside his head. The rest of the team had moved on, Voltron needed to move on. He was the last one left clinging, clinging to Shiro as much as he always had, as much as he had when the Kerberos mission failed, as much as he had in a new place, on a new planet where only one person knew all of him, his past, his present, his tentative future. Shiro was the first person to know his Galra heritage, the first person to care about him and trust him and confide in him and Keith wanted to hold on to that.

But he had to push Shiro to the back of his mind. Keith knew it was better than letting Shiro's memory take full control.

He couldn't afford that.

Voltron was leaderless and someone needed to pilot the Black Lion. Keith hoped someone else took up that burden; he would rather Pidge or Allura or (hopefully not) Lance, but he himself couldn't replace Shiro, not with decades more experience nor talent. He only would if there were no other options.

"Time to face the music," Keith murmured to himself.

He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. Maybe he'd flip through some of the new footage and try to convince Coran to alter his cameras, increasing clarity in the imaging. He'd ask Pidge or Hunk, but...better not.

Keith spent the next several vargas staring at his laptop, periodically enlarging sections of an area to examine the detritus and determine what were Galra or human remains and what was just drifting metal. Many Galra sentries and soldiers were frozen in space, their ships ripped to shreds around them. Blades of Marmora were more difficult to spot due to their unobtrusive looks, mostly, the black uniforms. Just a thin layer of armor between each Blade and the vacuum. Keith shuddered. The Paladin suits were stronger, but not by much. Shiro had to have survived by the skin of his teeth.

He also searched for dying, but functional ships with enough oxygen to sustain a single pilot. If the engines didn't work but the oxygen supply was mostly unused, Shiro could have latched on to a ship and waited for someone to find him.

(Unfortunately, most Galra fighter crafts were piloted by sentries or piloted remotely. The odds of a nearby ship having the capacity for oxygen...)

Keith's vision began to blur. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. One sector not cleared meant Shiro could be gone for good; any stone left unturned meant the slow end of the remainder of Keith's sanity. He'd never considered himself fully stable; his "abandonment issues", as the Garrison's psych evaluation proclaimed, did him no favors. But Keith had had a good thing going with the Paladins, with Coran and Allura, and with Shiro laughing and _living_ after every official statement said Kerberos was a lost cause. Losing that now, Keith didn't think he'd be able to live with himself, much less everyone else.

One more sector, and then he'd sleep for a couple vargas. One more sector.

Just...one...more...

* * *

 

Someone was shaking him.

Keith lashed out with a hand, pushing whoever it was out of his space and grabbing his knife from his belt. "Keith, it's Coran, you're safe, alright?" the person said.

He looked up and immediately lowered his knife. "You caught me off-guard."

"Would you like me to knock next time?" Coran asked amusedly, but with a serious undertone.

"I don't like to be touched."

Coran nodded. "Knocking it is. Everyone's meeting in the hangar to try out the Black Lion. They sent me to get you. I had a feeling you wouldn't have received Lance very well."

"No, I wouldn't've." Keith stood up and rubbed the back of his neck. He must have slept on it wrong. "Shall we?"

Pidge waved to him as he walked in and Hunk handed him a bowl of food goo, glaring at him until he took a few bites. Allura nodded his direction and Lance asked what the hell took him so long, to which Keith replied by threatening to interrupt Lance's daily moisturizing routine. He slept sparingly enough that it wouldn't be hard to pull off, anyway. Lance scoffed. "So who's getting this party started?"

Allura took a deep breath and stepped forward; Lance stepped back and put up his hands in a placating gesture. "Makes sense. I would always choose you too." He winked and she looked startled, then scoffed at him and entered the lion.

She spent a few dobashes in the lion, Lance getting more and more anxious with each one. Keith tapped his foot impatiently rather than kicking Lance in the shin with it. Eventually, Allura returned, shaking her head and crying a little onto Coran's shoulder. Keith knew how much piloting a lion meant to her, if only because her father had helped build the ships. If he had a chance to be a part of his father's work again but failed in some unknown and inexplicable way, he'd feel hopeless too.

Lance spent half a varga in the damn lion. Any reason to compete with him, Keith thought bitterly. Shiro wanted Keith to be the leader, Lance had to immediately prove why he was the better choice. Keith was far more occupied with Shiro and the Kerberos mission through his Garrison years than his supposed rivalry with another pilot whom he'd never met and honestly didn't want to challenge. But Lance saw it as a personal affront and despite their impressive teamwork the past few months, they still butted heads over the dumbest shit. It was exhausting and frustrating.

Lance came out once Coran dragged him out. He attempted to comfort Allura, who subsequently actually kicked him in the shin and stormed out, Lance trailing behind her exaggeratedly holding his bruised leg. _And all's right with the world_ , Keith thought to himself.

Hunk walked in and walked right back out, shaking his head.

Pidge apparently couldn't even reach the controls inside the lion due to their slight figure, which was very unfortunate in Keith's opinion. He trusted Pidge the most to lead Voltron, besides Shiro, because Pidge was intelligent and logical and always kept their cool. Pidge had a different style than Keith, who jumped into everything with both feet, or Allura, who focused on preservation and peace ahead of investigation and battle. Rather, they thought systematically and with safety in mind, but still accomplished tactical goals precisely. Shiro had had a relationship with the entire Holt family prior to Keith coming into the picture, therefore Shiro must have known how valuable Pidge would have been on a team.

And yet, he still insisted on Keith as the leader of Voltron.

Coran tried the lion as well, knowing that only Keith was watching him. He soon came back out, looking disappointed, but he shook it off and nodded to Keith. "I wish you the best of luck." He paused. "Shiro was rarely wrong, especially about you. Trust his judgment, for his sake and our sakes and your sake."

Keith frowned and scaled the stairs into the Black Lion. He remembered flying it, hijacking it to save Shiro's life. But their bond, if it had even formed, was not recognizable in comparison to his bond with Red. That, above all, proved that the Black Lion could distinguish between life-or-death scenarios and destiny scenarios. The Black Lion knew her shit and was incredibly loyal; she stayed connected to Zarkon despite ten thousand years of hibernation, knowledge of his terrible deeds, and Zarkon's corrupted quintessence. Shiro wouldn't be any different, and since Shiro was dead and Zarkon's connection was fully severed, the Black Lion wouldn't be able to hold a new connection for another, logically, ten thousand years.

This was so futile. Why did Keith see it when no one else could?

He perched in the pilot's chair and reached for the controls. "I know you wanted this for me, Shiro. But I'm not you. I can't lead them like you." Keith gripped the controls tightly. "I would give anything to have you back. Anything."

The Black Lion's screens flickered and for a brief moment, Keith was incredibly terrified. But the controls locked and the screens shut down and the Lion became as immobile as it had been with all the other paladins.

Keith let out a long breath of relief.

He left the hangar and walked as slowly as he could to the lounge. They could survive with four lions; they'd been surviving for months now. He'd keep searching for Shiro, and everything would go back to the way it was.

The Black Lion would remain unoccupied.

"What happened?" Hunk asked, attempting to shove another bowl of food goo into his hands. Hunk had this strange notion that Keith needed to be fed constantly. Lance escaped it, despite being a freaking bean pole, Pidge ate on a very specified schedule (with alarms on their computer and everything), and Allura and Coran were deemed fine because they'd already survived ten thousand years, apparently.

Sometimes Keith wondered if Hunk worried about him. Not in the parental way that Coran had, but maybe he did.

"Nothing. The Black Lion didn't want any of us." Keith took the proffered food goo and whatever spices had taken salt and pepper's places on the table.

"How can that be?" Allura thought aloud. "The Black Lion hasn't had the occasion to know many other people throughout our travels, so if the Lion was to choose, it would choose someone it knew through proximity."

"Zarkon could have reformed the bond," Pidge said critically. "We have no data confirming his death, in fact-"

"Can we forget that for a bit?" Lance interrupted. "I'd rather not imagine that scenario. 'Destroy civilian targets,' Zarkon will order, 'no, that goes against our code of honor,' Allura will protest, but 'TOO BAD, I'M THE LEADER AND I SAY VICTORY OR DEATH!!!!!!'" Lance paused. "That last part has about six exclamation points after it."

Allura rolled her eyes and Hunk jumped in with "Yeah, that was unnecessary, I already have nightmares about what would happen if you were our leader."

"I'm deeply offended by that," Lance replied, holding a hand to his heart and closing his eyes, an exaggeratedly iridescent tear falling.

"Is anyone else seeing the glowing blue aura and white roses exploding around him? Or is that just what the outside people are seeing?" Pidge asked, pushing up their glasses.

"Fourth wall breaks aren't allowed here," Hunk muttered. "Also, what's with the Mori/Kyoya aura but Tamaki-style roses?"

"The aura is likely due to Lance as the pilot of the Blue Lion." Pidge nodded decisively.

"Could we remain on topic or has the topic devolved past the point of no return?" When no real answer came, Allura vacated the room dazedly, saying she was headed to check the crystal's matrix. Keith finished his food goo and left the room as well. There were still vargas of footage to analyze.

Suddenly, an alarm blared in the corridor. Keith ran to his station; how could they be attacked already? Every screen on the bridge flashed red and frantic Altean script burst over Keith's console.

"The Black Lion is gone?!" Allura booted up the castle's defenses almost out of habit before actually reading the warning message. "You said no one bonded with it!"

"No one did," Keith answered. "Could the Black Lion have bonded with Zarkon again?"

Allura shook her head. "That bond was broken by Shiro's willpower in the Black Lion's mindscape. Zarkon's bond is forever severed."

"Are you sure?"

She hesitated.

"Allura. Are you sure? Could it be Shiro instead?"

"The lions evolve on their own. I can't say what the Black Lion could be trying to accomplish given the parameters we are living in."

Keith wanted to shout at her, but no one would gain anything from that. "Can you track her trajectory?"

"I can try." Allura pulled up several screens, each turning up ten, twenty blank maps of the surrounding space. "The Black Lion seems to have disappeared."

"Check again."

"I'm checking every speck of data we have," Allura snapped. "The Black Lion has left our field of vision. But there is a strange energy emanating from the hangar."

"Follow it!"

"Keith! I can and will remove you from the bridge." She typed a flurry of codes into the castle and a streak drew itself through Keith's monitor.

"What are these readings?" Pidge asked as they stepped onto the bridge. "I've never seen anything like that."

"So the Black Lion's gone and there's a trail of mysterious breadcrumbs leading to it? Since when are we on Zarkon's cruiser pre-battle?" Hunk asked, getting louder and talking faster with every question. "Are Zarkon himself and his creepy witch lackey around the corner and waiting to scare us?"

"Not helpful," Keith sniped.

"I understand that the Black Lion is the only remnant of Shiro you have left, Keith, but alienating your teammates will gain you nothing, especially not Shiro back to you," Allura retorted icily.

Keith folded his arms. She could believe what she wanted.

Allura's icy tone shut down any other communal conversation for the next few dobashes as Pidge, Hunk, and Allura combined their different devices for tracking the lions' whereabouts.

"Hey, guys! The lion's back in the hangar!" Lance shouted, pointing at his console. Everybody pulled up the image he was viewing.

"We lost a huge metal lion and then it reappeared?" Hunk put his face in his hands. "Sometimes I think our line of work causes health problems, like how many heart attacks I get every week."

"This isn't really work, we don't get paid for it." Lance leaned back in his chair. "If only. Hey Coran, did you have jobs on Altea?"

Keith stood up and stormed off the bridge. They all brushed it off like it was nothing, but Keith couldn't accept that. They treated Shiro like a relic from the distant past, and his lion like a vessel for Voltron's use, for the entire galaxy's use. Shiro was _more than that_ , his _legacy_ had to be more than that.

He took deep breaths as he walked to the hangar. _Patience yields focus_ , Shiro always said. Keith had always been shitty at patience, but he could focus. He had to focus.

* * *

 

The Black Lion looked like she had scarcely moved.

Keith banged his head against her leg. "You scared us. You scared _me_. Maybe Hunk's right about the heart attacks."

She sent an image of a circular beam of light, then a Galra ship, then a corridor leading to a cell, then Shiro, looking battered and unshaven. "I don't know what that means," Keith sent back to her.

The Black Lion projected annoyance to him. "I'm sorry, Red and I communicate better."

There was a brief flash of what felt like Black rolling her eyes. Then, she effectively punched him in the mind with a picture of Shiro, lying in her pilot's chair, battered and unshaven, just like the last clear image. He looked... _alive_.

Keith inhaled shortly and coughed. "You want me to check on him?"

The Black Lion huffed in his mind.

He ran up the stairs and tripped a few times, almost hitting the door to the cockpit. When he finally got through, he saw

- ** _Shiro_** -

as if he'd never left. He was _breathing_ , visibly breathing, his torso moving up and down in rhythm.

Keith reached a hand out to run it through Shiro's hair. It was a few inches longer and all black, but that didn't matter. Keith could touch him; Shiro was tangible, tangible and breathing.

"They won't believe this," Keith murmured breathlessly.

Shiro began to stir and Keith yanked his hand away. He stood back as Shiro stretched his arms and legs and tried to stand up. "Shiro? Are you alright?"

Shiro raised his prosthetic arm and lit it up violet. "Shiro, it's okay. You've been gone a few months, but everyone's still here. They'll be really happy to see you."

Within seconds, Keith was pinned to the ground, Shiro's prosthetic held to his throat. Shiro's eyes were narrowed and his stance read: enemy presence detected.

"Shiro, it's me, it's Keith," he protested, moving as little as possible.

"I know who you are, Galra scum," Shiro spat. "Where am I?"

"You're in the Castle of Lions, the hangar. This ship is the Black Lion," Keith choked out. He couldn't reach his communicator. And he was scared, but it felt more like the first few days after the battle when his chest felt like sharp rocks were cutting him into ribbons.

"How did you get inside the Black Lion? What alchemy did you pervert to violate her?" Shiro's hand was beginning to burn him.

"I don't know alchemy," Keith said, his voice getting more panicked with every word. "She let me in, she told me you were in here, that you were hurt."

"She talked to you?"

"She sent pictures and emotions, she can't really talk. She doesn't usually try to talk to me anyway. Please, let me go, let me get Pidge, they can explain better than I can."

Shiro loosened his grip a little. "Pidge is here?"

"Yeah, Pidge is probably in the common area," Keith responded quickly. "I can take you to them."

Shiro seemed to consider that for a moment, and then slowly stood up, still holding his violet hand close to Keith's neck. Keith knew it had to be burnt but shock closed off all sensation except the pain in his chest.

Keith walked measuredly to the common area. Any sudden movement and Shiro was liable to kill him. Shiro was like a rattlesnake backed into a corner, Keith thought hysterically, remembering all the times his dad had told him to never approach enclosed spaces in the desert.

_"Snakes feel threatened there and will strike out to find an escape. Never get in their way, you hear me?"_

Then why did Shiro leave his easiest escape route?

Pidge and Hunk immediately stood up when Shiro and Keith entered the room, Hunk holding out his hands peaceably and Pidge conjuring their bayard.

"Pidge. What's going on? Why is this _creature_ in the castle?" Keith winced at Shiro's tone. Allura's prejudice had been unpleasant, but this...this felt awful.

"He's the Red Paladin, and I'll thank you to release him," Pidge said sharply.

Shiro shook his head. "There is no Red Paladin."

Hunk's jaw dropped. "Wait, rewind. Of course, there's a Red Paladin, you have him held at hand-point."

"We never found a paladin for the Red Lion, much less a Galra like him."

Pidge blinked and put their bayard away. "What are you doing?" Hunk asked. "He's still got his hand pointed at Keith's neck."

"In Shiro's eyes, he's dealing with an enemy. It makes sense that he'd use the nearest available weapon," Pidge bluntly stated.

"Why are you not freaking out about this?" Hunk made wild hand gestures toward Shiro.

"Release him, that's an order," Pidge barked at Shiro. He reluctantly put his hand down; Keith sat on the floor as gracefully as he could without giving away how terribly his legs were holding him up at the moment.

"What's going on?" Hunk asked.

"I'd also like to know." Keith pulled his knees close to his chest unconsciously.

Pidge huffed. "It's simple. This Shiro is from a parallel reality, and the Black Lion brought him here."


	2. dangerous (and now i've lost it all)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "I Don't Know Why" by Imagine Dragons.

Dark.

One minute, stars coated the surface Shiro existed in; the next minute, everything was black.

For a moment, Shiro wondered if it were possible to die twice. It’d be slightly funny after all the times he’d been proclaimed dead or wanted to die or actually died. The universe would say, _Nah, we were just joking the other times. You’re dead for real now._

However, the fact that he was still thinking and felt conscious meant...that he was still alive? Maybe?

He’d been in the Black Lion for months, trying to communicate. Ironically, the mindscape communal communication only worked if there was a paladin in each lion. Each lion could talk to their own paladin, and the lions could talk to each other, but since Shiro was an uploaded consciousness, he had very limited energy within his sphere of being. He and the Black Lion spoke, well, as much as the lions could speak, but he couldn’t reach anyone else, nor any other lions. Maybe the longer he spent in the mindscape, the more energy and capacity he’d gain.

But now, he’d never know.

Suddenly, Shiro felt a slap across his face.

He snapped awake, frantically looking around. Shiro recognized the Black Lion’s interior, but...

He was no longer in the mindscape. He was solid, he could move his _toes_ , he could move his head, he could move his legs, he could move his arms! Before, Shiro had existed without a physical body; he didn’t really move so much as drift from thought to thought. His mind had no boundaries, except the boundaries of the Black Lion’s mind. And he had missed being solid, he’d missed it so much.

“Shiro, what the hell are you doing?” someone asked.

He looked up to see Pidge. “How long have I been here?”

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “The Black Lion arrived a few dobashes ago. Where have you been?”

“In the Black Lion’s mindscape.”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “The Black Lion should have brought you back sooner, regardless of where your consciousness was.”

“Pidge, I was dead.”

They let out a short, unamused laugh. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“No. Pidge, I was _dead._ The Black Lion saved my consciousness and could only now bring me back to the physical realm.”

Pidge shook their head. “Please go to your cabin and sleep it off. We can talk about this later.” They strode out of the control room and slid the door shut behind them.

Shiro tried to sit up and wobbled a little. So, the body was new. It’d probably take some time to get used to. Everything would take time, including the team accepting him back. He didn’t think he’d been gone that long, or that short. Did the team think he’d abandoned them as if he’d just drifted off and took a vacation and then didn’t feel like returning? Shiro hoped they knew how much he’d missed them, how hard he’d tried to speak to them. But he had no way of knowing how long he’d been gone. The mindscape felt like a dream; every conversation was two vargas but only half a dobash simultaneously. Time stretched and shrunk and bent and cracked and skipped in the mindscape. The Black Lion never thought in terms of measured time, and since Shiro couldn’t reach the outside world, he couldn’t see time occurring around the Black Lion.

He wanted to see everyone. But Pidge was right: he could use a nap, he felt exhausted. Shiro supposed the human mind wasn’t meant to survive in the specifically strange state he’d been in as long as he had.

He trudged out of the lion and passed through the hangar as he went to his cabin. The hangar was mostly empty; Keith, Lance, and Hunk must have been on a mission. Hopefully, they’d be back soon.

Shiro collapsed onto his cot and didn’t bother pulling the blanket over his shoulders before he fell asleep.

* * *

 

Blearily, Shiro sat up and rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand. He didn’t miss feeling drowsy and awkward in the morning, but he had missed sleep. Shiro felt more alive now, more human.

He slid his cabin door open and shuffled to the lounge in his bare feet. He was sure he didn’t look like a strong leader right now, nor a role model. On a normal day, Shiro would have woken up at 0500 vargas and run around the track in the training room a few times, showering and dressing in time to have breakfast at 0600 vargas. Well, coffee, not breakfast. Hunk wasn’t usually awake to make breakfast until 0700 vargas unless there was a time-sensitive mission, and Shiro definitely didn’t trust himself in the kitchen anymore. He could barely cook with two human arms, much less one human arm and one unnecessarily strong Galra arm.

The lounge pantry thankfully had leftovers covered with plastic wrap in them. Shiro gratefully ate one of the bowls of food goo and washed it and his spoon, putting the dishes back into the cabinet. He wondered if the other team members were back from the mission. They could have left in the middle of the night (or the equivalent on the castle) and returned while he was still asleep. Maybe it was a long-term mission.

Shiro walked through the castle and ran his Galra hand along the walls. Everything looked the same; no rubble, no visible repair zones. Coran had done a really good job fixing the place up after the battle with Zarkon. He assumed they’d won. He remembered Zarkon dying in the mindscape; the tide of the battle must have turned right then and the castle escaped further damage. Shiro smiled. This ship was really important to Coran and Allura. They would have been devastated if the castle had been destroyed.

Pidge was on the bridge, flicking giant screens across their field of vision. “Is your head clearer?” they asked without turning around.

Shiro started, then said, “Yeah. You were right about sleeping.”

“I usually am.” Pidge swiveled their chair to glare at him. “You get paranoid and hallucinate when you’re awake, and yet, you still go out at all vargas to blow up Galra ships. It’s getting dangerous for your health and eventually, it’ll endanger the team as well.”

Shiro let out an exasperated huff. “I didn’t hallucinate that, Pidge. What I said about the mindscape was true.”

They pulled up another screen, still glaring at him. “The data shows you had thirteen vargas of sleep. You are aware that there is no ‘making up’ sleep, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your habit of sleeping six vargas per night was barely acceptable and took a toll on your functionality. But going without sleep for two or three quintents and then sleeping twelve to eighteen vargas is extremely detrimental to your body. I’ll be forced to leave you behind on missions if you don’t form a healthy routine. Do I make myself clear?”

Shiro shook his head. “I sleep fine. I only pulled all-nighters before exams at the Garrison. I can’t imagine doing that to myself.”

Pidge scoffed. “Don’t play dumb. You’ve been reckless with yourself ever since you found out who killed Allura. Deal with your-”

“Allura’s dead?”

Shiro sat down on the floor and tried to process that. Had she died in the battle with Zarkon? He could have sworn he’d talked to her before they’d entered the fight with Zarkon and his machine. Could Haggar have killed her? Was she hit by a glancing blow? Who was flying the castle now?

“Yes, of course, she’s dead.” Pidge paused. “Did you actually forget that?”

“I didn’t know,” Shiro said blankly.

“You didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know!” Shiro stared at Pidge. “Did Haggar kill her? I knew she had gone off to fight Haggar and the druids with Kolivan and Antok, but I didn’t know it had gone that badly.”

“You didn’t know Allura was dead and you didn’t know who killed her.”

“No! I don’t know about Allura, I don’t know why everything is so wrong, I don’t know where the team is and I sure as hell don’t know what’s going on with you!”

“And I you.” Pidge frowned. “Earlier, you acted within your normal parameters. But sleep usually reverts you to a more, I guess, sane version of yourself. You’re talking like you’ve completely separated from this reality.”

Shiro laughed breathlessly. “Maybe I have.”

Pidge didn’t answer.

“Wait, you think that’s a possibility?”

Pidge let out a long exhale. “We don’t make conclusions without evidence. I’m going to collect data from the Black Lion and analyze it, and if you have come from another reality we’ll know for certain. Until then, leave my lab and be productive. There’re first-hand accounts of Galra trade routes that need evaluation. Sort them into which accounts are valid and which are planted by Galra espionage operatives, and give the valid ones to Hunk to check out. I don’t want you out in the field, whether you’re from another reality or high on scaultrite dust, my other, probably more viable theory.”

Shiro nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Pidge turned back to their screens in dismissal. _Interesting,_ Shiro thought to himself as he left the bridge. While he’d been gone, Pidge had taken command. He explicitly trusted Pidge to make good decisions, in fact, Pidge’s logic had saved many missions. But where had Keith gone?

Keith had the potential to be a leader. He had the skill to maneuver the Black Lion and the preliminary bond with her as well. The other members of Team Voltron trusted him to carry out the most dangerous missions. Keith had tactics, he had intelligence, he had skill as a pilot. He was impulsive, but never at the expense of others, only of himself.

Keith could have been doing missions with the Blades instead, becoming a close-range spy rather than the widespread coordinator that Pidge had become. That would suit him.

But...Shiro trusted him. Shiro trusted Keith more than anyone else, and he wanted to think Keith would take his opinion into account when choosing how to move forward after Shiro’s death. Of course, if it made Keith happier to do something else, Keith should do it.

Honestly, Shiro just wanted to see him. He wanted to see all of them, but Keith most of all. Lance and Hunk and Pidge had lived their lives just fine without him. Shiro wouldn’t have been able to live his life just fine without Keith. And Shiro’d missed him, missed him like he’d missed his toes and his head and his legs and his arms and _sleep_.

Walking into his cabin for a brief moment to grab his computer, Shiro headed into the hangar to wait for his other teammates’ return while he worked.

Pidge was right; many of the first-hand accounts were suspicious and upon closer examination fell apart. Either they didn’t connect with other accounts or the deliverer was a known Galra affiliate (apparently Shiro hadn’t been gone _that_ long), or the account couldn’t be verified with trustworthy informants. Shiro spent the next couple vargas holo-calling knowledgeable sources to make certain that he wouldn’t be leading Hunk into a trap.

He wondered if Pidge had given him this assignment to test him. If he was in another reality, he probably knew different informants and Galra associates than this reality had. In that case, he tried not to fall into any traps. Everything had to be triple-checked. He didn’t want to give the especially cynical Pidge reason not to trust him.

While Shiro confirmed a trade route in the adjacent quadrant, the bay doors opened and the airlocks sealed shut, keeping Shiro inside the castle. The Blue and Yellow Lions flew in and landed in the hangar, bay doors closing behind them. Lance and Hunk exited their lions and began walking towards the hangar door, completely ignoring Shiro.

“Hey guys!” he said, waving his human hand and continuing to type with his Galra one.

Lance turned around; he noticed Shiro and his shoulders stiffened. Hunk’s body language became cautious as if he was looking at a wounded animal. “Well, you look more dull than usual,” Lance said bitingly. “Did Pidge harp on you about endangering the team again and sit you down with busy work?”

“I….Pidge did tell me I needed to sleep more. But I just got back from the dead, so I feel like I should be useful now, busy work or not,” Shiro replied, letting a bit of hurt slip into his words. He didn’t know what he’d done to offend everyone. Shiro probably deserved some of that scorn for abandoning the team during the battle with Zarkon, but he _died._ His body had disintegrated and his mind was uploaded to a metal lion’s consciousness.

“Back from the dead. That’s a new one,” Hunk remarked resignedly. “When did Pidge last examine him for luminescence concentration?”

Lance scoffed. “Yesterquintent? Two quintents ago? I don’t know. They should check him again.” Hunk gently took Shiro’s hand and tried to get him to stand up.

“I have to finish my data collection on this lead. This is my last one.” Shiro brushed Hunk off and opened a holo-call to a Galra informant stationed on a remote planet two quadrants over. She corroborated his information and smiled, saying it was good to see him up and about.

Once the call concluded, Shiro compiled all the data and sent it to Pidge, hoping he hadn’t made any mistakes. “Come on,” Hunk said, pulling Shiro away from his desk. Lance had already left the hangar. “We’ll get you tested again.”

“What are you testing me for?” Shiro asked, grabbing his computer and holding it under his arm.

Hunk mumbled, “Today isn’t a good day, is it?” to himself, leading Shiro to the lab. He then established a comm link and said, “Paging Pidge to the main lab. Lance thinks Shiro’s learned how to hide how shiny he is.”

“Tell Lance that I’m busy enough without sticking needles in Shiro to tell him things he already knows,” Pidge snapped back, voice sounding crackly over the comm.

“Shiro says he’s back from the dead. He’s never said anything like that before.”

Pidge sighed. “I know. I found him in the Black Lion yesterquintent and he looked like the sun. But he slept for thirteen vargas and still kept saying that.”

Hunk huffed. “I can test him. I’ve seen it done enough times. Tell me when you can come down.” He ended the comm link and the door to the lab slid open.

Shiro sat down on the lab's cot, prompted by Hunk, and Pidge was right, there was a needle. “Now, I’m going to take a quick blood sample. This machine,” Hunk gestured to a large metal screen next to him, “will read it and collect data that Pidge and I can interpret.”

Shiro put his head in his hands. “Shiro, I need your human arm.” He obliged him but really felt like running and hiding.

The blood sample took thirty ticks, and then the machine was lighting up with Altean script and neon colors. “That doesn’t make sense.” Hunk scratched his head.

“Nothing makes sense!” Shiro shouted. Hunk took a step back and took a defensive stance. “I don’t know what you’re testing me for! Why do you keep acting like I’m going to attack you?”

“Shiro, calm down.” Hunk held his hands out in an appeasing gesture. “Let’s just wait for Pidge to come down here. They’ll know what to do.”

Shiro ran a hand through his hair and tried to take deep breaths, staring at the glittering lights from the blood-reading machine. He still couldn’t read Altean very well; ‘danger’ and ‘systems malfunctioning’ he understood fine, but not much else. The symbols flashing across his field of vision were unfamiliar, but soothing in their unfamiliarity. The colors were bright but not red. Red was usually bad.

Striding into the lab, Pidge took one look at the machine and let out a hysterical laugh.

“What’s wrong?” Hunk wondered, looking at Pidge worriedly.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There isn’t a trace of scaultrite in his blood.” Pidge slowly sat down next to Shiro and patted his shoulder absentmindedly. “In fact, these readings state that he has never had scaultrite in his blood, something we know for certain isn’t true.”

For a few moments, nobody spoke. Hunk sent a message to Lance telling him to come to the lab and Pidge fiddled with the machine’s dials, changing the output symbols.

“Do I belong here?” Shiro asked softly. “Is this my reality?”

Pidge didn’t look at him. “Wait until Lance gets here. I want to have this conversation once, not twice.”

Shiro nodded silently, watching Altean trip and stutter across the screen every few seconds as Pidge entered new commands. Either way, whether he was from the wrong reality or he’d spent the last few months or years high as a kite, it came down to him: his mistakes, his trauma, his simple _wrongness_. He didn’t belong here. Maybe he never belonged here.

Allura was dead now; it was most assuredly his fault. So not only was the team missing another leader, but Shiro wasn’t fit to lead anymore. Pidge kept everyone together, including him, the crazy, paranoid one who regularly spouted scientifically unbelievable things. So maybe…maybe he should have stayed where he was. He didn’t even know how he’d gotten here, so maybe he could go back.

“Lance.” Pidge motioned for him to sit on the cot next to Shiro; he shook his head and said he preferred to stand. “You’re aware of our Shiro’s unfortunate…substance abuse problem?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“...This Shiro never had it. This Shiro has never taken anything stronger than the maximum dose of ibuprofen.”

Lance folded his arms and closed his eyes. “So, this isn’t our Shiro.”

“No.” Pidge patted Shiro on the shoulder again. “He’s from a parallel reality. In this other reality, he died. Somehow the Black Lion saved him and brought him to this reality.”

Lance scratched his head bemusedly. “Our Shiro is now in the other reality?”

“We have no way of knowing. Probably, yes. The realities needed to compensate for the sheer amount of energy required to displace one person and one lion, so our loss needed a gain, just as their gain needed a loss. It’s the Law of Conservation of Energy. Balance.”

“Do you think our Shiro is okay?” Hunk asked softly.

Pidge pursed their lips before speaking. “If they don’t let him near scaultrite, if they let him go through withdrawal and keep him busy doing missions, I think he’ll be okay in the long run. I hope wherever he is that I’m kicking his ass.”

Shiro blinked. “How did I even get here? If the other me needs that much help and support…”

“...Then what are you doing here?” Pidge raised an eyebrow. “You died. I think you tie for the most screwed up.”

“Maybe you both need to be where you are.” Hunk nodded to himself.

“This is pointless.” Lance made to leave the room. “Don’t screw anything up.”

Once he’d gone, Pidge hummed and said, “He’s mad at our Shiro for letting Allura die, even though it wasn’t his fault. The scaultrite thing is shiny icing on the ugliness cake.”

“Shiny?”

“It’s the Altean colloquialism for being high on scaultrite dust. The original form of it shines, and so do the eyes of frequent users.”

Shiro shook his head. “This is crazy. I don’t know how long I was in the Black Lion’s consciousness, but there was no end in sight. I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have brought myself here on my own.”

“No one here wanted you gone,” Hunk said quickly, trying to sound reassuring.

“It could have been the Black Lion herself for all we know. I can’t pretend to understand anything that goes through their complicated comet brains.” Pidge pushed up their glasses. “We’ll figure it out. And when we do, we’ll get you back home. I’m sure your team is worried about you.”

Shiro let out a single laugh. “They think I’m dead. Keith’ll probably punch me in the face.”

Pidge and Hunk froze. “Keith?”

“Yeah. He’ll be so pissed at me. I died in the middle of the battle with Zarkon, leaving him to lead the team. I let him down.” Shiro sighed. “I don’t know how I’ll make it up to him. He deserves better.”

Hunk opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but an alert buzzed on Pidge’s comm. “We’re being hailed by the Blades,” Pidge stated, none too gently yanking the needle out of Shiro’s arm and shutting the Altean machine off. “Come on, Kolivan doesn’t like waiting for us.”

“Maybe Kolivan will know where Keith is,” Shiro remarked as the paladins left the lab. No one corrected him, so he assumed he was right.

They took the holo-call in the main bridge. Lance sashayed into the room thirty tics after the rest of them, ignoring Shiro entirely and leaning against Allura’s piloting console. Shiro sat in his chair because Hunk insisted even with the small amount of blood taken for the luminescence concentration machine to read, he was still human and would still get severely lightheaded if he tried to move around excessively. He rolled his eyes at Hunk but took his advice. Normally Hunk would be pushing Keith to think about his health, but Keith wasn’t here.

It was a sobering thought.

“Kolivan. It’s good to hear from you,” Pidge was saying, and Shiro tuned in to listen.

“I notice that your eldest pilot looks more in sync with the world today.” Kolivan’s piercing stare impaled Shiro to his seat.

Pidge nodded. “We’re working on it.”

Kolivan inclined his head. “Good. I wanted to inform you of a critical development in our fight against Zarkon. There is a unique superweapon originally created by Ranvik at the edge of the galaxy. At the death of Ranvik, only a skeleton crew of sentries and one Blade remain to keep the superweapon out of Zarkon and his foremost commander’s hands. We ask that you assist us in defending the base and if necessary, destroying the weapon and evacuating our agent.”

“I thought Commander Thace was one of your agents,” Shiro said, the other people in the room turning to look at him, Lance with disgust, Hunk with sadness, Pidge with bewilderment, and Kolivan with a strange knowing in his eyes.

“It is not Commander Thace we are up against,” Kolivan finally replied. “It is Commander Keith.” He pulled up a picture on the screen. The man had a scar on his right cheek and lavender skin. Same hair. Same violet eyes. But he...looked so _angry_.

“That’s Keith?” Shiro asked numbly.

“I don’t care if you knew him in your other life,” Lance spat. “That bastard killed Allura, and he’s going to pay for it.”


	3. knew i was fine about this time yesterday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Real life happened: a vacation (that turned out to be the least relaxing thing ever) and then school, and then another, much less stressful vacation to Calgary. Their Pride Week was one of the most supportive environments I've ever been in. I hope everyone can experience that at some point in their lives. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for sticking around, guys :) enjoy! Chapter title from "When a Heart Breaks" by Ben Rector.

Hunk’s jaw dropped open. “Another reality? How is that even possible?”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “How doesn’t matter now. Right now, we need to put this Shiro in a healing pod.”

“Healing pod?” Keith asked, sitting up quickly. Shiro had looked battered, but not that terrible. Had he contracted something?

“I’ll explain later.” Pidge grabbed Shiro by his Galra arm and dragged him from the room. They tended to do that. But the strange thing was that Shiro _let_ them as if he was perfectly used to Pidge ordering him around.

Keith put his head on top of his knees and took several deep breaths. Four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out, four counts hold. His dad had taught him that. His dad had gotten panic attacks when Keith was little; breathing had helped him come out of the attacks. He had also said that just three deep breaths could put the brain into a pre-meditative state, slowing thought and lowering the heart rate.

“Are you okay?” Hunk asked, kneeling down next to him.

“Nope. Not okay,” Keith said breathlessly, beginning to hyperventilate and trying his damnedest not to.

“Alright, alright. Think about something else,” Hunk replied quickly. “Anything else.”

“What is there—” breath “to think about—” breath “besides this?” breath “Tell me, because—” breath “I don’t know the answer.”

“If he’s here, that means that our Shiro is in the other reality, right?”

“What?”

“It’s the Law of Conservation of Matter. If the two realities are systems, Shiro and the Black Lion couldn’t leave their system without an equal amount of matter replacing them. Balance.”

Keith huffed a bitter laugh. “That doesn’t mean we can get him back. Has anyone ever crossed the boundary between realities?”

“Well, Shiro has.”

“Not helpful if we don’t know how he did it,” Keith snapped.

Hunk sighed. “...I know you’re in pain. I know you’ve been in pain for a while. But please, we’re all in pain, too. Allura and Coran and Lance and Pidge and me, we’re all hurting that Shiro is gone. And this new Shiro is going to make it better in some ways and worse in lots of others.”

“I can’t even look at him properly, Hunk.”

Hunk sighed. “I know. Just remember that no matter what, you have people who care about you. But you have to let us help, and you have to treat us well, because your entire support system, which you’ve just recently built, is in danger.”

Nodding, Keith put his head back on his knees. “I’m...sorry.”

“I know.” Hunk patted him on the leg. “I’m going to go check on Shiro and the gang. Come see us whenever you’re ready. Pidge’ll punch Shiro in the face to make him cooperate with you if necessary.”

Keith didn’t answer and Hunk left the room, softly sliding the door shut behind him.

This was a fucking mess.

In all honesty, Keith would have loved to stay in that room for the next ten quintents until Pidge inevitably figured out how to send that Shiro (he’d have to call him Shirogane; he couldn’t use the nickname to refer to such a stranger) back where he came from. Keith would never have to see that look in his eyes again. Keith would never have to face the distaste he’d seen in everyone else who’d laughed at him in elementary school and ignored him at the foster homes. They’d envied him at the Garrison and eventually cast him out when he’d picked a fight with the wrong people. They’d left him alone in his empty house to search for someone who wasn’t coming back. He couldn’t see that in Shirogane again, too.

But he had to. He had to deal with Shirogane, pretend like it didn’t kill him inside. He had a duty. People depended on him.

And _Shiro_. Shiro was out there somewhere. Keith just had to figure out how to get to him.

Keith took another three deep breaths, tried to clear his mind, and stood up. _Patience yields focus._ And he really needed some focus right now.

* * *

 

He found the whole team, including Coran and Allura, gathered around a sleeping Shirogane in a healing pod. “—the verdict, Doc?” Lance was asking.

Pidge sighed. “He’s on drugs.”

Hunk raised his eyebrows until they disappeared under his hairline. “Drugs. Shiro.”

“Quite. Even now, there is a great deal of scaultrite in his system. It’s built up over, mmm, maybe a year.” Pidge pointed at the screen. Hunk was nodding, but Keith really had no idea what he was looking at. He couldn’t read Altean, except ‘danger’ and ‘systems malfunctioning’.

Coran put his head in his hands. “I had hoped that particular danger would have died with Altea.”

“It was common on Altea?” Lance asked curiously.

“Yes, very common. Many working-class citizens, such as those who made teludavs, mirrors, and glass and constructed taller buildings experienced severe paranoia and hallucinations. It caused many workplace accidents, but lower-class citizens couldn’t often afford a healing pod, so the actual cause of the problem wasn’t determined until I was a grown man.”

“Scaultrite dust? I thought that was a cautionary tale for children to prevent them from handling dangerous teludav materials until properly trained,” Allura said quizzically. “My father told me about it many times.”

“My princess, though you know much about the world, you do not know everything. Part of that blame is mine, but part of it was your father and mother’s.” Coran huffed. “Are dust addictions a regular part of Earth life?” he asked, turning to Pidge.

“Similar to Altea, drug addictions can occur anywhere and to anyone, but the majority are in high-risk, poverty-stricken areas and populations.” Pidge fiddled with the healing pod monitor until the lights turned blue. “It is usually either a taboo subject or an overly-dramatized one, either ignoring or exploiting the person. There is still a lot we don’t know about addiction, even today, so helping the afflicted can be challenging.”

Coran nodded. “I’m afraid to tell you that healing pods cannot ‘cure’ addiction.”

“I’m aware of that. The readings show the cause, but while it can knit skin back together and allow the brain to sleep, it can’t fix this.” The healing pod’s screen disappeared and Pidge put the pod into sleep mode. “If we let him stay here for a couple quintents, a lot of internal damage will be mended. However, we have to stage an intervention. I assume that our alternate-reality counterparts also put him in a healing pod whenever it got bad but couldn’t afford to put a different, more effective solution into practice. They already only have four paladins, given Keith’s absence, and trying to function as a team without Shiro as well would have been very difficult.”

“That doesn’t make leaving him like this okay!” Lance protested. “He’s sick, he needed the team’s help and they just abandoned him?”

Pidge stiffened. “I can assume little about their motivations, especially since Shiro said very little about himself in the first place. What I do know is that I was, if not the team leader, then in a position of authority. I would have done whatever was logical for the _team’s_ survival. If it was logical to let Shiro continue his addiction with only surface-level treatment, I must have had a reason. I have to believe that,” they trailed off helplessly.

Hunk laid a hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “I’m sure you did the best you could.”

“When does he get out of the pod?” Keith asked quietly.

“Three quintents should do it. But we have to get all the scaultrite, dust or otherwise, out of the castle. I’m locking down the teludav room until further notice.” Pidge pushed their glasses. “He’s not going back to the other reality until he gets real help.”

“Where are we going to find a _rehab_ in _space_ ?” Keith could feel the hyperventilation about to start again (his lungs hurrying to release and compress and his heart fluttering painfully fast in his chest). _Shut it down, shut it down, everything’s fine, no one’s going to kill you in your sleep._

“I’ve had several friends experience scaultrite dust addiction. I may be able to talk to him,” Coran replied, stroking his chin in thought.

“Medically speaking, there is likely the Altean equivalent of nicotine gum for scaultrite. Coran, have there been instances of people dying from scaultrite dust withdrawal?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Hunk breathed a sigh of relief. “Just checking. On Earth, withdrawal from severe alcohol abuse can kill someone.”

“This is crazy! None of us are medical professionals! We all went to the Galaxy Garrison to be pilots or engineers!” Keith said, gesturing at Lance and then Hunk and Pidge. “We don’t have a real medic and I don’t trust any of you to not kill him.”

“Weren’t you just chomping at the bit to throw him back?” Lance folded his arms. “Make up your mind. Either you want to help the other-reality Shiro with his weird drug problem or you wanna kick him to the curb for being really racist and trying to kill you.”

Silence followed Lance’s statement.

“What? I can read a room. Keith has been a crazy, moody bastard, even more than usual, and Number 5 had to drag Terminator over there into that healing pod by his ears. So, Terminator got pissed and violent, Keith is scarred for life, and now no one knows what to do with him.”

“What about the racism?” Hunk wondered.

“Keith is normally sensitive about two things: Shiro, and his Galra mom. I think both buttons got pushed at the same time.”

Silence once again followed.

“Since when did Lance grow up? Is he a doppelganger, too?” Hunk asked cautiously.

“So it’s impossible for me to be mature?” Lance sniped.

Pidge and Hunk shrugged and Allura nodded vehemently. Lance sighed. “Ay Dios mío, no tienen fé.”

Shaking their head, Pidge waved him off. “Go be useful, all of you. The watched pot, aka Shiro’s issues, will never boil. Leave me to complete my magic.”

“I want to stay with him,” Keith murmured, completely against his better instincts.

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “You dead sure about that?”

Keith nodded.

“Fine with me. I have medical research to complete and it’s not like he’s going anywhere.” Pidge patted the pod and left, muttering under their breath.

Quiet fell over the room. Shirogane’s breathing fogged up the glass of the pod and dissipated every few seconds. Keith found a chair in the corner of the room and dragged it over beside the pod, collapsing into it. He wouldn’t be able to sleep through the pod opening but he could still rest for a while.

Ay Dios mío, as Lance would say, he really needed sleep.

_He was sorting files in the hangar when the Blue and Yellow Lions arrived. He honestly wanted to talk to Lance and Hunk, but this needed to get done first. Letting Pidge down right now would feel awful._

_“Well, you look more dull than usual today,” Lance said scathingly._

_He felt hurt by Lance’s tone but he probably deserved it. Abandoning the team meant they were entitled to their feelings about him._

_He’d tuned out Hunk and Lance’s conversation to finish his work but managed to catch the end of it as Hunk grabbed his arm and gently led him away from the table. “We’ll get you tested again.”_

_“What are you testing me for?”_

_Suddenly the scene changed. A machine flashed Altean at him, not that he knew what it was saying._

_“You’re aware of our Shiro’s unfortunate...substance abuse problem?” The speaker paused. “...This Shiro never had it. This Shiro has never taken anything stronger than the maximum dose of ibuprofen.”_

_“How?” another voice asked in the distance._

_“The realities needed to compensate for the sheer amount of energy required to displace one person and one lion, so our loss needed a gain, just as their gain needed a loss. It’s the Law of Conservation of Energy. Balance_ .” _The non sequitur jolted him in his seat._

_The scene changed again, and a deep tone took over the conversation. “It is not Commander Thace we are up against. It is Commander Keith.”_

Keith jerked his head up.

Shirogane was still in stasis, but the pod’s lights were flashing. “Pidge,” Keith said blearily through the comm. “The pod’s going haywire, can you come down to the medbay?”

“Sure.”

Keith rubbed his eyes. Dreams got weird normally, but living on an alien castle ship definitely made it worse.

Every night he managed to sleep longer than a few vargas, he would have the same dream: he floated in a starry black space until his feet felt solid ground. He would run and run and run and run, not knowing where he was running to until he thought he saw Shiro looking off into the stars. Keith would call out to him, but just as Shiro would start to turn around, he’d vanish.

This new dream was strange, but not painful. He felt deeply confused, though.

“This is what you call ‘going haywire’?” Pidge scoffed as they entered the room. “These are healthy vital readings.”

Keith sighed. “I can’t read much Altean. Can you blame me for calling in the expert?”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “We can let him out in a few dobashes.”

“A few dobashes? I thought you said it would take a couple quintents for him to recover.” Panic leaked into Keith’s voice, but he tried to keep it level.

“You must have fallen asleep. He healed fairly quickly, so the pre-reality-jump Shiro must have only sustained superficial injuries before coming here and not had scaultrite in a couple days.” Pidge winced. “He’s going to be a terror when he wakes up.”

Keith inched away from the pod.

“It’s because of withdrawal. He won’t mean to be a terror.” When Keith didn’t respond, Pidge sighed and said, “I know you’re scared, whether you’ll admit it or not.”

Keith scoffed. “Hunk said the same thing.”

“Hunk may not be a trained pilot, nor the most vocal member of the group, but he’s smart. In fact, he’s probably smarter than all of us about emotions. We’d do well to listen to him more often.” Pidge affectionately poked the healing pod with their index finger and strode from the medbay, calling out behind them, “Comm me when he wakes up. We’ll get the whole team down here as a buffer between you and Terminator.”

Keith ran a hand through his hair. He had to find a way to rationalize this in his own mind, make up a plausible story, otherwise, he’d never be able to be in the same room with Shirogane without a chaperone.

Maybe, Shirogane was a transfer from another ship, being added to the main crew much later due to interplanetary travel discrepancies. Crew changes happened practically every month while he attended the Garrison. Mostly because no one could stand him, but at least that wasn't unfamiliar territory.

Maybe, Shirogane had been stranded in space by a Galra attack and just needed a ride to the next planet. Also plausible; lots of Galra ships had left lots of species without a home.

Maybe, Shirogane was some unknown galactic force that periodically and senselessly dropped in like a crazy health inspector and made everyone really uncomfortable, and then left, without any reason why he’d come in the first place.

Admittedly, Keith was grasping at straws.

He didn’t know how to deal with this. Hyperventilating obviously didn’t work.

Having the team as a buffer between him and Shirogane? Sounded better than anything he’d managed to come up with.

“You know,” he whispered to the healing pod, “you’re really stressing me out, and it’s not even exam season.”

Keith hated mission reports. They weren’t even required by Altean law or necessary to be a paladin. But _Pidge_ , damn them, insisted on having a record of practically every known excursion, including Lance’s random spacewalks outside his lion in his free time and Hunk’s periodic trips to Vrepit Sal’s (probably to eat something other than food goo). Pidge, fortunately, didn’t know about the many, many times he’d gone out to look for Shiro, otherwise, he’d have to fill out forty mission reports. More likely, fifty or sixty.

This latest account consisted of him describing his ‘several diplomatic failures’ at the Voltron Coalition meeting. According to Pidge, everyone had had to fill one out and bureaucracy waited for no one, regardless of personal circumstance or current events. So, here he was.

Shirogane hadn’t moved, thankfully. Having someone who actively hated him scrutinize him filling out a mission report would have put him off mission reports for the rest of his time as a paladin.

Keith signed the document with his finger and sent the report off to Pidge. Shutting off his laptop, he made to leave the room and put it back in his cabin, but the healing pod began to hiss as it slid open.

Frantically, Keith tried to get away from it, only to remember that Shirogane would fall out of the pod. As referenced by Allura’s awakening and Lance’s stay in the medbay post the battle with Sendak, being asleep for so long in a standing position wasn’t conducive to safely exiting the pod. There were reasons coma patients were kept in hospital beds. Honestly, the Alteans could have thought that through a little better.

As Shirogane began to fall and Keith was having his split second of realization of this, he rushed forward and caught Shirogane in his arms. Well, _attempted_ to catch him. More like they both tumbled to the ground, Keith getting unceremoniously crushed under Shirogane’s weight.

Keith laid there for a second, trying and failing to get breath back into his body. Shirogane still seemed to be asleep, but that wouldn’t last. Keith had to find a way to get him upright or in a chair or something, and himself at least three meters away.

Keith shoved Shirogane off of him as best he could, reaching unsuccessfully towards the chair he’d been sitting on before. He awkwardly inched him and Shirogane nearer to it, Shirogane’s hip jabbing into Keith’s stomach. A bit of maneuvering put Shirogane slumped on the chair and Keith laying on the floor in exhaustion. Dead weight was so much more difficult to move. People in control of their muscles exercised that control to position their weight differently, making carrying that person easier. Dead weight, well. There was no control.

Shirogane jerked in the chair after thirty ticks. His head snapped up and his eyes flicked around the medbay, assessing his situation. Shiro used to do that during his early days in the castle. He’d been tortured for a year, moved from cell to cell, from the gladiator stadium to the science labs and the alchemy chambers. Keith had heard every story Shiro’d told him, whether Shiro had meant to tell him or not, because whenever Shiro thought about life as a Galra prisoner, his eyes would get frantic. Keith knew that look in Shiro’s counterpart’s eyes so well. He’d just hoped he’d never have to see it again.

“You’re in the medbay of the Castle of Lions,” Keith said calmly. “I’m about to call Pidge down if you want to speak to them.” He didn’t wait for an answer; Shirogane wouldn’t be likely to listen to something a piece of untrustworthy Galra scum said to him.

“Hey, Pidge,” Keith spoke into his comm, “Shirogane’s awake. He fell out of the pod so I sat him in a chair if that’s alright.”

“Those quiznakking pods. Why aren’t they made to lay down like normal induced-coma facilities?”

“I’ve wondered that. Maybe some improvements would be good when we have some downtime.”

Pidge sounded like they were smiling: “Those pods will never get altered then. I’m heading down; I’ll pick up the others on the way.”

“Roger that.”

Shirogane hadn’t said anything.

“The team is coming down to see you,” Keith relayed.

Shirogane nodded and stared blankly at the floor.

Pidge, Lance, Coran, and Hunk had all gathered in the medbay a safe distance away from their new passenger. Keith leaned into a corner of the room and refused to look at anyone.

Hunk finally broke the silence. “Hello, Shiro. Do you feel better than when you arrived here?”

Shirogane nodded.

“You’re not very talkative, are you?” Lance asked bluntly. “I would’ve thought you’d be raging all over the place like you were when you first came here.” Pidge elbowed him in the ribs but Shirogane barely acknowledged that he’d spoken.

Shiro always put on a facade when he didn’t want to talk about something. Maybe this version of him simply became a brick wall, no speech in or out.

Allura swept into the room and asked how Shirogane’s recovery had been progressing. Pidge began explaining in maybe too much medical detail what was happening in his body (then again, Allura hadn’t known about the true dangers of Shirogane’s condition, something Keith hadn’t gotten over).

Keith forgot that this was the first time Shirogane had seen Allura because it hadn’t seemed to matter before.

Shirogane’s face went white in shock and he stood up quickly, faltering from dizziness, but still staggering over to her. He threw his arms around her and buried his head in her shoulder, Allura straining a little to hold him up. Shirogane had one hand tangled in her hair and the other in a vise grip on her dress between her shoulder blades.

Everyone else in the room was shocked into tense stillness.

“You died,” Shirogane murmured into her shoulder. “I knew I was never going to see you again. You were gone for good, Allie.”

Allura tentatively reached a hand up to run it through his hair. “It’s alright. Everything is alright now.”

Lance looked deeply sad at this interaction, rather than his usual steaming jealousy. Hunk had tears in his eyes. Pidge adjusted their glasses and their eyes shifted to the floor. Coran had made an aborted motion forward, but once he determined the princess wasn’t in danger, he stepped back. Keith couldn’t look away.

“He killed you,” Shirogane spat, wrinkling Allura’s dress further with his hand. “He ordered them to take you away.”

“Who did?” she asked soothingly.

“Commander Keith.” Shirogane turned to glare daggers at the team. “I can’t believe you all let her near that monster.”

Keith’s lungs constricted painfully as he felt any hope of being accepted by Shiro’s counterpart shatter.

_(breathe in, out, in/out, inin/outout, inininin)_


	4. take a picture of all my flaws

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been brought to you by my beta readers, C and L, who flirted via the comments on the Google Doc of this fic.  
> L: lalala edits edits edits  
> S: gracias  
> C: who's this cute dork in the comments section ha, welcome L  
> L: hello :)  
> S: holy crap please flirt in real life, you crazy kiddos  
> C: but S electronic flirting on your fanfiction is the best way to go about this what are you saying (:  
> Chapter title is from "Narcissist" by No Rome ft. The 1975.

Shiro suited up perfunctorily.

The other him had left his armor behind when he left, so Shiro didn’t have to search for it.

After the bombshell with this universe’s Keith, life went on, as much as life can go on in half a varga. The base wasn’t going to save itself; better to have four paladins than three, especially since Shiro was apparently more in control of his faculties than his counterpart.

It still hadn’t hit him, Shiro thought to himself. Hopefully, it wouldn’t hit him until the mission ended, maybe on the way back to the castle in his lion, so no one had to see. Allura’s death meant no teludav, which meant he’d have a lot of time. He had barely trusted his own team to see him at his worst, so he guessed he just had to turn off the open comm line and let what he could out before he got back.

“Hey,” Lance shouted. “We gotta go.”

Shiro put on his helmet and locked it in place.

* * *

 Ranvik had kept his base fairly well-guarded. Despite the lack of Galra soldiers, sentries and drone patrols came around the corner every few ticks like clockwork.

“We’re looking for the agent called Krolia,” Pidge said, tightly gripping their bayard. “She’s been deep undercover for a long time, but she got intel from Kolivan that we’d be here, so this should be a quick trip.”

“Are we sure she’s not a traitor?” Lance asked. Hunk punched him in the shoulder. “Ay, déjame solo.”

“Yes, we’re sure. Kolivan has known her since they were young.”

“Ella podría haber cambiado mucho,” Lance muttered. Hunk punched him again.

Pidge glared at Lance. “If there are no more complaints…” Stepping out of their hiding place, they carefully hooked their bayard’s blade around ten sentries and dispatched them, motioning for the rest of the team to advance farther down the hallway. Shiro followed behind Lance and Hunk, trying not to get in the way. Lance and Hunk both had projectile weapons, which were far more effective on the drones and long-range sentries, leaving Shiro to destroy the closer-range sentries with his arm.

When he started using his Galra arm for the first time in battle, he felt like a toddler having a temper tantrum, flailing a club around and breaking everything in sight. Except, his arm was more like a lightsaber from the old Earth film series. Once, Shiro stopped to think about whether the wounds his arm inflicted on living things would cauterize like lightsaber wounds.

He didn’t follow that train of thought for long.

As the team came into the main control room, a Galra woman typed rapid commands into the computer. Red lights flashed on the screen but she kept typing. Finally, she pressed her hand to the screen and sped out of the room. “Let’s go! This base is no longer secure!”

“Krolia, I presume?” Pidge asked. The woman slammed the door to the control room and locked it, nodding.

“We have to get clear. The weapon can destroy anyone else that tries to come to this planet, but we have to make sure we’re out first. It knows me, but the rest of you are fair game.”

Pidge directed Hunk, Lance, and Shiro towards their extraction point. “Krolia, you can ride with Shiro. He’s one of the quietest and I have work to complete,” they said bluntly.

Hunk looked a tad offended and Lance scoffed, dragging Hunk toward their lions.

Shiro tilted his head to Krolia and she followed him into the Black Lion. Once inside, she stood by the doorway to the cockpit, as far away from his pilot’s chair as possible. Shiro felt the Black Lion awaken and asked her if she could autopilot a little. She huffed at him and made the mental expression of putting a paw on his head. “So, Voltron is real. I didn’t believe it when Kolivan told me,” Krolia remarked flatly.

“I didn’t know Voltron existed until recently either. I was a...Galra prisoner for a while. When I escaped with Thace’s help, I stumbled on the Blue Lion of Voltron with the current paladins. We found the other lions later.”

Krolia raised an eyebrow. “You _stumbled_ on the most dangerous weapon ever made?”

“Well,” Shiro conceded, “Keith interpreted his readings. He knew there was something alien on Earth and found it.”

She frowned a little. “Keith?”

“Yeah.” Shiro sighed. “I wish I could reach him, but I can’t. Not even Black can, and she brought me here.”

Krolia fell silent and didn’t speak again until all the lions landed back at the castle. She disembarked, purposefully stalking through the corridors. Shiro did his best to keep up, but she was far more determined than his very confused-from-lack-of-use legs.

“Kolivan, you utter-” she broke off into a guttural language, presumably Galra, and shouted through the door to the bridge.

Kolivan rarely dropped by the castle, given he had his own base of operations and could easily communicate with his own devices. Shiro thought he’d come to personally take Krolia back to the Blades, but the expression on Kolivan’s face screamed his discomfort.

“Krolia,” he said cautiously, speaking the next sentence in Galra as she stormed up to him.

She unrestrainedly decked Kolivan in the face.

Shiro rushed forward to help the situation somehow, but Kolivan put a hand up to stop him. Krolia kept shouting the same few words at Kolivan, shaking him and hitting him on the chest with both her palms.

“Krolia!” Shiro finally exclaimed. “If you need the paladins of Voltron to help you, we’d drop everything to do so. Please, tell me what’s wrong.”

She turned around and Shiro regretted speaking. Violet tears streamed down her face, tinting her skin a shade darker. Krolia wiped a hand across her face. “You can’t fix this. He’s too deep in now. Trying to get him out would kill him.”

“Kill whom?”

Kolivan shook his head. “It’s confidential.”

“The hell it is,” Krolia spat.

“If it impacts how Voltron interacts with the Blades, the team has a right to know.” Shiro folded his arms. “I need to comm everyone to come down here.”

After Shiro contacted everyone, Lance far more skeptical than the others, he asked Krolia and Kolivan to sit down so that they could all calmly discuss this like adults. He could feel Keith rolling his eyes at that in his head.

Keith had always teased him about his more professor-like qualities, which Shiro called ‘being a rational adult’. Keith would fall silent at that and Shiro would ask what was wrong and Keith would shake his head and say, ‘nothing’s wrong, I just wonder sometimes if you see yourself as my friend or my mentor’.

Shiro always said ‘both’.

Keith would look at the floor for a moment and then change the subject.

“What’s this all about?” Lance asked, gesturing to the Blades and Shiro as he fell into a chair and spun it around a couple times.

“I’m sure they’re going to tell us,” Hunk replied, pulling his own chair up.

Pidge walked in, took one look at their setup, and chose to stand, putting their hand on Hunk’s shoulder.

It struck Shiro at that moment how _together_ the three of them looked. Their bonds were intra: within and around each other. They were one unit. In his own reality, they had been close, but Allura and Coran and Keith and Shiro were there to create more of a communal environment. The three of them had been without their Shiro (mentally) and Allura and Keith (physically) so long that Shiro knew he’d never manage to repair those relationships, especially since Allura had died and Keith had defected to the Galra side.

Pidge, Lance, and Hunk were a team before the Voltron had ever come into the picture. They must have accepted him out of a sense of hero worship or something, and Keith because they’d had to accept him to form Voltron. They could function just fine on their own.

Shiro glanced over to Krolia and Kolivan, the former of whom was glaring at the latter with all the fire of the rocket that blasted him off to Kerberos.

“Kolivan has some information he needs to share with us,” Shiro said after an awkward pause.

“...Krolia is reacting without all of the facts.” Kolivan’s cold stare gave nothing away, contrary to earlier.

“Well, when I know all the facts, maybe you’ll think more highly of my reaction,” Krolia snarked.

Kolivan pulled his long braid out of his hood and twisted it around his fingers. “When you left your son with me, you took a long-term undercover mission. I couldn’t let him know where you’d gone for security’s sake. He grew up, trained as a Blade. But he harbored a great deal of resentment that you’d seemingly left him. Two years ago, he deserted the Blades of Marmora and integrated himself seamlessly with Galra command.”

Krolia raised her eyebrows. “That’s it? My son is killing and conquering worlds because you didn’t want to break my cover by telling him the truth?”

“It was a regrettable mistake on my part.” Kolivan seemed to notice that he hadn’t stopped fingering his braid and let it fall. “I cannot discern his motives for not disclosing the existence of the Blades years ago, but he is firmly against us and knows our tactics. We must treat him with the utmost caution.”

“How did he rise so fast in rank?” Krolia asked. “He’s not just my son, you know.”

“He advertises himself as your son. You’re distinguished enough with your weapons work but still obscure enough that at your disappearance today he can play it off.” Kolivan sighed. “He is ruthless, and intelligent, and could tear this organization, thousands of decaphoebs of work, apart in an instant. I suggest we tread lightly.”

Krolia put her head in her hands and said evenly, “What the hell, Kolivan. I _trusted_ you with my _son_ and now he’s gone and you have nothing to tell me except ‘tread lightly’?”

“I have nothing to say on my own behalf.”

Lance rolled his eyes almost audibly. “What’s one more Galra traitor? We can work with this, we just need a bit more stealth. And with old Shiro gone, our stealth points went up five hundred percent.”

Krolia turned to look at him, fury and curiosity both making their way onto her face. “What do you mean, the old Shiro is gone?”

“This one is from another reality. Our Shiro, shiny as a brand new coin, fucked off to this guy’s reality and swapped them.” Lance ignored Pidge’s ‘shut up, you imbecile’ gestures.

“So the Shiro who knew my son didn’t exist in this reality until now?” She looked down at the floor and then stood up.

“Where are you going?” Kolivan asked, reaching for her arm.

“I’m going to find my son. If you try to stop me, I’ll eviscerate you. Clear?”

Kolivan let his hand fall.

Shiro had a terrible thought. “You’re Keith’s mom? His Galra mom?”

Krolia looked back at him. “Commander Keith is my son, yes.”

Shiro tried to take deep breaths. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Keith killed one of our team members. I’m afraid that’s the only reason we know him in this universe.”

He walked as measuredly as he could to the bridge doors and out. He managed to get to the hangar without alerting any cameras how he was feeling (Pidge monitored cameras on and off all day). Shiro climbed inside the Black Lion, _his_ lion, the one he’d shared a mind with, and entered the cockpit.

He closed his eyes and fell into the mindscape with no further thought.

* * *

  _“What is there—” breath “to think about—” breath “besides this?” breath “Tell me, because—” breath “I don’t know the answer.”_

_“Keith?” Shiro called out. “Where are you, I can’t see you.”_

* * *

 Someone shook him loose of the mindscape.

“Shiro, follow the flashlight.”

Shiro obeyed, blinking at the sudden brightness.

“He’s fine. Probably fell asleep in here.” Pidge fuzzily stood up, getting clearer as they exited the cockpit. Hunk and, oddly enough, Krolia stayed behind.

“That must have been a huge shock to you,” Hunk said sympathetically, patting Shiro on his Galra shoulder. Shiro only dully felt it; the nerve-endings on his missing arm were deadened at best, but if he saw someone perform an action on that arm, he could associate the sight with the earlier feeling. “You were close with Keith in the other reality, right?”

“I’ve known him since he was thirteen. I’d just started TA-ing for the Galaxy Garrison and he’d just entered our junior programs. He got in a lot of fights.” Shiro huffed a laugh. “But he beat all my flight simulator records. Keith is an absolute marvel as a pilot.”

“Which paladin was he?” Krolia asked.

“Red. Had the temper for it.” He reached his human arm down to push himself out of his chair. Standing didn’t last long; he sat back down fairly quickly from dizziness. “I wanted him to lead if I couldn’t. I like to think he took me seriously when I asked him.”

“You trusted him?” Krolia piercedly stared at Shiro.

“Yeah. More than Matt and Sam.” Krolia blinked at his response but Hunk nodded.

No one spoke for a few minutes as Shiro tried to regain his balance without leaning on his chair, Krolia got lost in her thoughts, and Hunk kept reaching out to help Shiro but stopping and retracting his hand.

Shiro had taken part in most of the diplomatic missions that built the Voltron Coalition. Negotiating and peacemaking came easily to him, trained and tested in the Garrison, where any number of conflicts could take place in a day, from scientific disputes to all-out fist fights. He had to acknowledge differing viewpoints, often between species he could only half-understand and apply each viewpoint to a common goal. Culture and ideals varied beyond anything he’d ever seen on Earth. However, the main common ground easily rose to the surface: rebellion against the Galra.

The culture of this reality was vastly different in comparison to his own: Lance hated Shiro’s destructive habits and drug use. Both of those things were generated by the death of Allura, which Lance also had a lot of anger about. Keith was a loathed commander of Galra forces, a defector of the Blades of Marmora. Pidge had taken control of the Voltron Coalition in Shiro’s mental absence, and Coran had disappeared at Allura’s death, despite Alfor and Allura’s Altean legacy. Somehow, Hunk had stayed much the same. The Blades were known to the paladins and their alliance had formed. Despite all the differences, _there was common ground_. The Galra Empire still ruled and Zarkon could be brought down.

“Did Shiro have any records of his research of Commander Keith and the Galra Empire’s current defenses?” Shiro asked abruptly.

Hunk shook his head. “I don’t think so. He didn’t fill out mission reports.”

“I’m sure that went over well with Pidge,” Shiro muttered. He paused for a moment. “The lions can communicate with each other and their own paladins. Do you think Yellow would have picked up a signal from Black as to where she and the other Shiro were headed and the outcome?”

“He’s pretty nosy, so probably.”

“Talk to him. If I know the information the other Shiro collected, I may be able to apply my reality’s plan to this reality’s circumstances. Keith will be a wild card, but we can handle it.”

“What plan?”

“We defeated Zarkon in my reality. And we can do it in yours.”

* * *

 

Pidge folded their arms. “This is crazy. The amount of logistical work it would take to coordinate a multi-pronged attack across several quadrants would bury our Coalition and the Blades.”

Lance nodded. “Estoy de acuerdo.”

“We accomplished it in the other reality,” Shiro said with a sigh. “It is very likely that without Keith and Allura, the timeline of this plan got pushed pretty far back. But it’s also likely you would have come up with it on your own.”

“Zarkon is a menace that we’ve been trying to eradicate for ten thousand years,” Kolivan snarled. “You cannot presume to end all of that work in one grand gesture and endanger the lives of countless planets and systems. It is reckless and illogical.”

“You and I and Allura made this plan originally,” Shiro countered. “I trust you and I trusted Allura. Now you just have to trust me.”

Kolivan clicked his tongue and turned to look at Krolia. “What do you think?”

Krolia cocked her head to the side and scrutinized Shiro. He briefly thought that Keith had gotten that look from his mom. “What were the impacts of the battle in your reality?”

He stiffened a little. “Zarkon died. I defeated him in the mindscape and he disappeared. I remember the lions escaped and there was a great deal of debris. Allura went up against Haggar with Kolivan and Antok, but I think we can dispatch Haggar another way.”

“You died too, Shiro,” Hunk pointed out softly.

“I did. But the plan still worked. Zarkon still died. The big picture is the same.”

“Will dying here even have an impact on the other reality?” Lance wondered aloud. “If you were dead before and managed to become a physical person, will dying here make it permanent when you go back?”

“I honestly don’t know. I hope the other Shiro lives, though. He deserves a second chance.” Lance scoffed and rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything more.

“Well, I personally have a rather pertinent question given our current situation,” Pidge said, raising their hand. “How are we going to do this without Voltron? We’ve never even found the Red Lion, much less formed Voltron before.”

“I have a feeling I know where the Red Lion is.”

The entire team gaped at Shiro.

“I know where it was in my reality, and since Keith is a Galra soldier, it makes me doubly sure.”

“It’s a Galra possession, isn’t it?” Pidge asked despairingly after a short pause.

“Yes. And more than likely, Keith felt the bond. He would want Red as close to him as possible. But, since there is only one lion possessed by the Galra and the Black Lion no longer recognizes Zarkon as her paladin, Voltron cannot form. The Red Lion is probably sitting in a bunker somewhere under heavy guard, but not being used.”

“You put a lot of faith in Keith’s bond with the Red Lion,” Krolia remarked.

“Some things are universal. Besides, if Keith regularly piloted the Red Lion, you would know about it. The fact that it’s been kept so secret suggests no paladin or that Keith is refusing to pilot Red for the Galra.”

Pidge sighed. “It’s true. Zarkon would be insufferably gloating on all communication channels if he found a way to pilot Red. It wouldn’t be as prestigious as piloting Black, but one lion is better than none. However, if Keith is Red’s paladin, he could fight with her against us.”

“I know his style and his patterns. We have four lions to his one. You three,” he gestured to Lance, Pidge, and Hunk, “work well together, so I can just pick up the peripherals when we fight. Lance, your ice will combat Keith’s fire, so you may be the best suited to fighting him. He is impulsive and fast, but we have surprise on our side.”

Lance shook his head. “We’re just going along with this? This guy is the only one who has all the information, he could be leading us directly into a trap orchestrated by him and his ‘media naranja’.” Pidge snickered a little at the Spanish and Hunk simply looked despondent.

“I would never trap you,” Shiro replied earnestly. “This team means everything to me.”

“We’re not even your team! You have your own team in another reality. We’re just a way for you to redeem your shiny counterpart in our eyes and a replacement for the people that you’re actually missing.” A charged silence sharply struck the room; Lance ran a quick hand through his hair before speaking again, softer. “...I just don’t trust your reasons. And I think that the three of us can take care of ourselves without your input. We can help you find a way home, but I don’t want you interfering in what is already un fracaso.” He turned to Hunk and Pidge. “But I’m not the only one making this decision. What do you guys think?”

“I want to help him, and I want his plan to work,” Hunk said softly. “We could use some help, Lance. We don’t have to do everything ourselves anymore.”

Pidge exhaled slowly. “I don’t entirely trust his motives either, but we’re stuck right now. We’re understaffed, low on resources, and frankly, I want Zarkon dead. If he’s already done it, the odds that we can do it are much higher than if we tried to make our own plan with three lions and limited Blades.”

Lance inclined his head. “Fine. I still don’t like this.”

“If we had my brother here or Coran here or frankly any other experienced adult on our team full-time, I would think differently. But right now, Shiro,” they stared directly at him, “we need you. Don’t screw this up.”

Shiro nodded as fast as he could. “I won’t. I’m going to find the Red Lion and figure out where Keith stands. If he’s a traitor, I think we can still successfully carry out the plan with four lions.”

He walked out of the room once all the members of the meeting began to split off and occupy themselves. Kolivan and Krolia started to argue in Galra again and Hunk and Pidge were looking at a diagram on Pidge’s computer. Lance had wandered off to the training room, probably to beat up simulators and pretend they had Shiro’s face, but quietly, so Pidge wouldn’t glare at him.

Shiro meandered around the castle for a while. Lance was right, he knew that. He knew that the other Shiro had let down the team many times, either by not being there for them or by being too high to care. Allura’s death was no excuse. If anyone of his own team members died, he’d be destroyed, but he would never endanger everyone else as his counterpart had.

And he did know that; he wasn’t posturing. He had no family anymore: his parents had died soon after he graduated the Garrison and became a TA, more than six years ago. He had been a legal adult for two years and learned to cope. Adam, well, he thought Shiro was dead. Shiro had dealt with that too once he realized the story that the Garrison had told the world about the Kerberos mission. Shiro had learned that he could deal with loss and still function very well. He couldn’t understand his counterpart at all; he’d never stooped so low in grief as to turn to chemical stimulants.

If he could cope, why couldn’t the other Shiro cope?

“Shiro?” he heard vaguely.

He looked up.

Krolia shook her head at him. His vision blurred and his throat became uncomfortably tight. “You can’t just sit in the middle of the hallway like that. Find a cot or something.” Her voice rang calmly in his ears but he couldn’t bring himself to stand up.

“Nothing in this reality is your fault,” Krolia murmured. “My son defecting, that wasn’t your doing.”

_But_ , Shiro finally realized, _that’s not the point._ Shiro had the capability to irrevocably destroy his own reality. He’d already done it in this one.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are some Spanish translations!  
> Déjame solo: Leave me alone  
> Ella podría haber cambiado mucho: She could have changed a lot  
> Estoy de acuerdo: I agree  
> Media naranja: colloquially used as 'soulmate' but literally translates to 'half orange'  
> Un fracaso: a disaster


	5. the equator peeled off when i let you go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "End of All Time" by Stars of Track and Field.

Allura let Shirogane sleep on her couch. Shirogane only listened to Allura and begrudgingly to Pidge, and frankly, he was a safety hazard. Withdrawal was never pleasant and the chances of him staying clean diminished without Allura’s calming presence. Also, she slept on a different side of the castle than the other team members, making it more difficult for Shirogane to find Keith and kill him in his sleep.

Well, the first part of that logic was Pidge’s. The second part was Lance’s.

But Keith didn’t particularly care about any of that.

It sounded juvenile to say that Keith had never given up hope. Before Shirogane arrived, he could have searched galaxy after galaxy ceaselessly for Shiro. Until he received concrete evidence of Shiro’s death, he would have never stopped. But now, now he felt like he’d truly lost everything.

He’d been deluding himself the whole time.

Keith strode through the halls of the castle confidently. He still hadn’t talked himself out of what he was about to do.

He found Allura’s room and knocked on the door. Her door had a system of locks, likely souvenirs from the era of Zarkon’s war against Altea, and it wouldn’t automatically slide open as he approached (unlike all the doors to the paladins’ rooms). Allura also had installed light-based alarm clocks, meant to imitate the natural light of her home planet, and light-based warning systems. Her routine so closely revolved around those pink-yellow light shows that her hearing while asleep mimicked the hearing of an old person on Earth who enjoyed heavy metal at full volume.

Keith knew all this and planned for it.

Shirogane, being closer to the door and known for waking up when a person moved around two doors down, would answer him.

Keith stepped a few feet away from the door, knowing Shirogane would come out arm blazing and angry. The clicks of each lock opening made him stiffen a little, but he didn’t move back any further. When the doorknob finally turned, Keith made himself relax. Shirogane probably couldn’t smell fear, but he could read body language. Keith wanted this to go as smoothly as possible, if for nothing more than their continued coexistence on this ship.

Shirogane opened the door a crack, then, seeing Keith, relocked all the locks and stepped out, shutting the door behind him. Keith stilled every instinct to run away. “You want to fight in the training room?” Shirogane asked calmly.

Keith blinked in shock. “Yeah.”

Shirogane nodded and began to walk.

They didn’t speak another word to each other for the few dobashes it took to get to the training room.

Once they’d both stepped through the training room door and it slid shut behind them, Shirogane lit up his arm. “Fighting with your bayard?” he asked.

Keith nodded, his bayard materializing in his hand and lengthening into a sword. Shirogane stood in a battle stance and Keith copied him, keeping his weight on the balls of his feet. Shiro had always, always weighed more than him, so Keith had always compensated with speed and impulsivity. Shirogane wouldn’t know all his moves, not like Shiro had. Then, maybe, after this fight, things could calm down between them.

He and Shiro often fought about the Garrison or authority or Adam and it never ended with words. Shiro had been surprisingly good at spitting back all the vitriol Keith threw his way. Once they were finished bruising each other with kicks and punches, it was easier to forgive each other. Not that Keith forgave him now, for dying and leaving Shirogane in his place.

“Once this is over, we let it lie,” Keith said suddenly. “You stay away from me, I stay away from you.”

“Done.” Shirogane rushed at him, and Keith quickly parried with his sword. 

* * *

The fight went on for a long time. Keith never got the upper hand, but Shirogane never seemed to either. They twisted around each other and landed blows but no knockouts. Keith had forgotten what burns from Shiro’s arm had felt like. He almost missed them. But Keith fought back just as hard and covered Shirogane in gouges.

Every hit felt like a victory over Shiro’s death. Every hit felt like revenge on the man who had presumed to replace Shiro. Every hit felt more and more like he wasn’t fighting Shirogane; he was punishing Shiro.

“Oh shit,” Keith huffed breathlessly.

“What?” Shirogane snarled.

“I need to stop.”

He rolled his eyes and deflected Keith, sparks ringing off his arm. “You never want to stop until we’re both on the ground.”

Keith let his sword fall. “What are you talking about?”

Shirogane laughed bitterly. “You forget I know you. We fight all the time.”

“I thought I was the one who killed your best friend and ruined your entire life. How can we fight without you wanting me dead?”

Lowering his arm and shutting it down, Shirogane’s posture slumped. “I spar with anyone and turn very violent, more violent than I want to be. I could overpower every member of the Voltron Coalition. So, I tried funneling some of that anger into scaultrite. That obviously didn’t work.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “You chose drugs because you couldn’t have a healthy sparring session with anyone in the castle?”

“I’m not explaining my dust usage to you,” Shirogane spat. “You don’t deserve to hear about it; you are not trustworthy.”

“You obviously trusted the other me enough to put yourself at risk by fighting with him! Where does that kind of twisted logic come from?”

“He was angry too!” Shirogane shouted. “He was always just as angry at me as I was at him. I never cared about his reasons and I still don’t. We knew how we felt about each other’s doctrine, each other’s livelihoods. But we were...cathartic, I guess. When we fought those few times, it was just two people raging at each other. I didn’t have to think any further than that.”

Keith dismissed his bayard and sat on the floor, crossing his legs and putting his head in his hands. “And you still think I’m a murderer. You fought with me knowing that you just wanted to beat up my murderer counterpart.”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. You’re the one who called me in here. You’ve done this before too, you get angry at him too.”

“I _got_ angry at him. He’s gone.”

“In another reality. You’ll have plenty of time to spar with your own Shiro when I get back.”

“No,” Keith said softly, looking up at Shirogane. “My Shiro,”—and didn’t he feel strange calling him that?—“died four months ago.”

Shirogane shook his head. “What about the Law of Conservation of Mass? Something of equal mass had to have replaced me.”

Keith let out a watery laugh. “By that logic, your reality could now contain the Black Lion and Shiro’s mass’s worth of space dust. He’s _gone_. The laws of science can’t negate that.”

Sputtering, Shirogane said, “That’s beside the point! You’re being a hypocrite about our sparring because you’re using me to replace him just as much as I’m using you.”

With a sigh, Keith raked a hand through his hair. It had started getting longer and he wasn’t sure what to think about it. “That’s why I had to stop the fight. I made it about him, not about you. I’m angry at you, I’m _so quiznakking angry_ at you for somehow showing up and giving me panic attacks and making me feel like I’m worth nothing, like I’m Galra-colored pond scum to you. You dared to show up wearing the face of my…” Keith snorted. “Whatever. I have many reasons to want your face smashed into the ground. But I never wanted to fight Shiro with the honest desire to hurt him. We fought, yes, but never maliciously. We knew why we were fighting and stopped when we’d had enough.” He paused. “But I honestly wanted to hurt him today. And you were just the most available target.”

Shrugging, Shirogane sat down as well. “I hate Commander Keith for killing Allura. He never had remorse and never answered me when I asked him why he killed her. And I wanted to hurt you for that. You were convenient and you knew our patterns.”

“So, we’re both shitty people with issues,” Keith replied bluntly.

Shirogane laughed, really laughed, and he sounded exactly like Shiro. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

“Wanna fight some more?” Keith asked after a few dobashes just sitting in silence.

“Sure. Why not?” 

* * *

Keith and Shirogane walked back to Allura’s room only a couple vargas before her alarms would light up. “Do you know how to get back inside?”

Shirogane nodded slowly. “Probably. Her door hasn’t seemed to change between worlds so I assume I can.”

It wasn’t the same. Keith didn’t expect it to be. (Or maybe he did.) But that was fine. The two of them had made a breakthrough and when Shirogane went back to his own reality, Keith could make peace with the fact that he’d never see any form of Shiro again.

He would have given anything to get Shiro back, and he got his wish. No point in asking for something beyond the powers of the cosmos to give.

“Hey, Keith,” Shirogane was saying.

“Yeah?” He shook himself out of his thoughts.

“...I can’t open the door.”

Keith sighed, “Aghhhhhhhh,” under his breath. “Didn’t I just ask you about this?”

“Sure. Doesn’t mean I know how to get back in. She just probably has different codes since she lived longer.” Keith winced. “Plus, I’ll bet Allura never expected me to sneak out.”

“Lance did.”

“He thinks I want to kill you. His opinion isn’t exactly unbiased.”

Keith huffed and leaned against the wall, sliding down to the floor. “You do want to kill me, though.”

Shirogane let out a short, offended breath. “Haven’t we moved past this? I want Commander Keith to die, not you.”

“It’s really hard for me to separate them. Can you blame me?” Keith asked defensively.

“I can, in fact, blame you. According to Pidge and Allura, your Shiro and I share nothing except the same name and Voltron. We don’t even share the same team members, much less the same minds or the same habits. We are completely different people.”

“Did you meet me on Earth?”

Shirogane rolled his eyes at the non sequitur. “No. I met _him_ when Allura got captured and he gave the order to have her killed.”

“Fine. What about your Garrison years? Did you ever meet someone called Griffin?”

“No, never.”

“He and I got in a fight once.”

“I don’t know anybody named Griffin.”

Keith shook his head in frustration. “What about Adam?”

Shirogane didn’t answer.

“Adam. Did you ever meet someone called Adam?”

Sitting down beside Keith, Shirogane took a deep breath. “Yeah, I knew somebody named Adam.”

“Were you going to marry him?” Keith wondered quietly, pulling his knees close to his chest.

“Yeah. We broke up before that could happen.”

A moment of silence rang through the hallway. “He was afraid that your illness would get you killed on the Kerberos mission. Adam was always terrified of losing you, you know that?”

“Yes. I know that.” Shirogane held his head in his Galra hand. “But it’s done now. He’s on my Earth living a much better life.”

Keith had thought about Adam a lot when the Kerberos mission failed. He’d been kicked out of the Garrison, but he still thought about how much effort it took Adam to get out of bed every day, to know that this was the one ‘I told you so’ he wished he’d never experienced. Keith and Adam rarely spoke, even when Adam and Shiro were dating, but Keith got the strangest urges after Kerberos to call him, ask him how he was, comfort him somehow. Adam was, after all, the only other person Shiro had been close to. Keith also had wondered if Adam felt the same gray, ugly void in his chest every time he thought about what he would give to get Shiro back.

Keith felt that void right now. But this time, he _couldn’t_ tell Adam about it, because that would mean he’d have to tell Adam that Shiro had been alive again for the briefest of moments, and Keith had lost him for good.

“Maybe,” Keith said slowly, “your life only diverges because you didn’t meet me. I was already gone.”

“I suppose,” Shirogane replied.

Keith released a bitter laugh.

“What?”

“I guess I just never considered how fucked up I would get without him.”

“Really? You two were that close?”

“Heh. Yes, we were.” He paused. “Maybe I’m so messed up about this because it’s hard for me to imagine a real life without him. You, on the other hand, never had that.”

“...I don’t understand.”

“You wouldn’t,” Keith said with a derisive huff. “I lived for a few years in an orphanage, where no one cared about my existence, much less thought I could accomplish anything other than life in prison as an adult. My dad had died, my mom had left when I was too little to know her, and I had _nobody_. I met Shiro, and it felt like all those bad feelings sunk underneath me for a while. He never judged me or told me I wasn’t good enough, or used me, or made me feel worthless. You see, my world revolved around Takashi Shirogane. I lost every single coping mechanism that didn’t involve seeing him. So when he died, I spun out of orbit. And I’ll never be the same.”

Shirogane didn’t say anything.

“You had no chance to build something with him. That’s why you’re dealing with this,” Keith gestured vaguely to the whole castle, “so much better than I am.”

Shirogane raised an eyebrow. “I tried to kill you the first time I saw you.”

Keith waved it off. “That’s normal for you guys.” He let his arm dangle down to the floor. “I’m just saying that Shiro and me, mostly me, didn’t do well without each other. That’s not particularly healthy, but it’s true. You became a fully formed person without me to lean on, you never had to learn what it was like without me. If our roles had been reversed, you’d be the one having panic attacks every time I left the room.” He paused. “At least, if my theory is correct.”

“How is this scenario any better for me?” Shirogane asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Really? I’m addicted to scaultrite dust, something I hadn’t even heard of until a year ago. I destroyed all my friendships because of said addiction, I left Adam on Earth without any word, I have no family, and I regularly beat up someone I hate so we can feel better about how angry we are all the time. If anything, my life is so much worse because you came into it too late.”

“My doppelganger also killed your best friend. That likely set off a few of those things.”

Shirogane shook him off. “The entire chain of events could have been averted.”

Keith froze. “You can’t think like that.”

“Why not? Everything else is possible in this world, why not time travel?”

“There are a few theories about time travel. The first is the ‘Harry Potter’ theory: that everything that happens will happen. Meaning, time travel’s effects are already part of the time stream. But the more important theory here is the Butterfly Effect: a butterfly’s flight pattern can create a hurricane. Do our lives need more hurricanes?”

Shirogane didn’t reply.

“The answer is no, dumbass. If you think this is bad, imagine if you made it worse. What if you killed your Allura earlier? What if Pidge or Hunk or Lance died because you thought you could mess with something humans don’t understand?”

“I’d be smart about it,” Shirogane said defensively.

“Sure,” Keith scoffed. “At best, everything would stay the same. At worst, the Galra would rule the universe and everyone we care about would die. I don’t want that to be on your shoulders.”

“I’m not your Shiro. You don’t have to care what lands on my shoulders.”

“Fuck that. Didn’t I say that Takashi Shirogane means the world to me? Aren’t you Takashi Shirogane?” When Shirogane was about to protest, Keith cut him off. “My Shiro would believe in you, too. Why can’t I?”

“He’s a better person than me,” Shirogane muttered, looking at his hands.

“If he was, that means you can be.”

Quiet fell over them for a few dobashes. The castle machinery hummed.

Shirogane exhaled suddenly.

“What?” Keith asked.

“When did you two meet anyway? You got in a fight, right?

“We met six years ago. The fight came later. I stole Shiro’s car the day we met. Shiro bailed me out.”

“Good Samaritan, then?”

“Yeah.” Keith smiled. “Good Samaritan.” 

* * *

Keith awoke with a painful kick to the ribs. “Quiznakking scared me, the both of you,” Allura was saying, turning to jab Shirogane too as Keith rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“We din’ know how to ge’ back in,” he murmured, glaring at Shirogane.

“Hey, it was your idea to break me out in the first place,” Shirogane retorted, smacking Keith with his Galra arm.

“Rude. So rude.”

Allura huffed. “Get off my floor. We have work to do.”

“Lance should be happy to know that I survived in his presence,” Keith said, jerking a thumb over to Shirogane. “Never mind, he’s probably disappointed.”

“My Lance hates me, so it’s nice that you two can exchange insults in jest.” Shirogane stood up unceremoniously and shrugged.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “But he worships you. You’re his hero.”

“Nah.” Shirogane pulled Keith up of the ground. “We each had different responses to Allie’s death. Mine was shining up every few vargas, his was anger. Mostly at me.”

Folding her arms, Allura asked, “Who actually has valid coping mechanisms among you?”

“Hunk,” Keith and Shirogane said simultaneously. “Pidge works too much,” Shirogane continued, “and you used to spend a lot of time talking to your dead father, even after we deleted his AI. Hunk usually just makes us food or orders it from Vrepit Sal’s when we’re low on supplies and thoroughly interrogates Sal to make sure he’s still taking care of Hunk’s customers.”

Keith frowned. “Maybe someday he can make food instead of having to battle tyrannical aliens.”

Allura nodded, beginning to walk down the hallway. “Maybe we all can go home someday.”

And all he could think was that at least she hadn’t said ‘go _back_ home’. Her home had perished in a ball of fire and Shirogane’s home was across reality and Keith’s home had died months and months ago.

They followed Allura to the kitchen, Keith heading straight for the Altean version of a refrigerator, Shirogane perching on the edge of the couch, and Allura coiling her hair into a bun as she sat next to him. Pidge already had their laptop open, numbers and Altean symbols reflecting off their glasses.

“So, Shiro, we’re going to start the dust substitutions today,” Pidge began. “Cold turkey isn’t generally a viable nor healthy way to quit an addictive substance because it shocks the body. What we’re going to do instead is give you substitutions, like with nicotine gum instead of cigarettes, and then gradually reduce the dosage until your body fully loses tolerance.”

Shirogane nodded. “Sounds good. You removed all the scaultrite from the kitchen cabinets, right?”

“Yeah. Also, the teludav room is locked down until further notice for everyone, meaning no biometric systems or anything. I programmed the door to change codes every varga using a special randomizer. That way, you can’t convince anybody to open the door for you and you can’t threaten me to give you the code because I won’t know it.”

Wincing, Shirogane nodded again.

“Great.” Pidge handed Shirogane a bright silver pill. “This is your dosage for today. You get these pills from me alone on a regulated schedule. Questions?”

“No, sir.” Allura handed him a glass of water and he swallowed the pill. Pidge went back to reviewing their numbers. Keith solemnly ate his food goo.

As much as he wanted to believe that the scaultrite pills would help Shirogane’s addiction, Keith also knew that habits were damn hard to break, especially habits that kept grief at bay. He still had to consciously convince himself not to go out into the debris field every day, and Shiro had only been gone for four months. Allura had been dead for a _year_ in the other reality, so Shirogane had been shiny as the sun for a year. Maybe the pills would help, Keith _wanted_ the pills to help, but he knew this wasn’t going to be as simple of a fix as Pidge wanted it to be.

Grief never went away, after all. People just got used to the weight of it.

Allura patted Shirogane on the shoulder and stood up to find some breakfast.

“Changing the subject; while I want to give you all the time in the world to recover fully, I just received word from Kolivan this morning about a new mission. In the turmoil of Zarkon’s apparent incapacitation, several factions of Galra warlords have been scrambling for power in the event of a Kral Zera, their ceremony for electing an emperor. One source of such power is a planet holding an extremely dangerous weapon. If we destroy the weapon, the factions will have to find another source of power and we buy ourselves more time to make the Coalition larger and build more bridges, as you Terrans say.”

“So, we’re just going in, blowing up the planet, and leaving?” Keith asked. “That simple?”

“Is it ever that simple?” Allura replied drily.

Keith let out a short laugh.

“Yes,” Allura continued, “we are supposed to go in and blow up the planet or dispatch it in some way, but Kolivan has one request: we find his undercover agent and bring her back with us. Apparently, she’s been in deep cover for many decaphoebs but he needs her knowledge and skills a bit closer to the central command.”

“Does that seem like a hollow excuse to anybody else?” Pidge wondered, looking up from their laptop.

Keith nodded. “But we have the firepower for a mission of that scale, and the Blades don’t. It would definitely blow their secrecy out of the water, plus, this agent has been in deep cover for a reason all this time. Inability to retrieve the agent due to the security of the planet would make sense.”

“Look at Keith, being all strategic,” Lance remarked as he trudged into the room, his face mask smudged from sleep.

“You forget we were at the Garrison together. I took just as many tactics classes as you did, probably more since I was actually going to be a fighter pilot,” Keith retorted.

Lance huffed. “Wow, okay. That was unnecessary.”

Sometimes Keith forgot that Lance was a real person. It wasn’t personal (well, kind of), but Lance had always struck Keith as a token person: the ‘class clown’, the ‘flirt’, the ‘comic relief’, the ‘rival’. He filled a role because the team constantly needed the break in tension that Lance provided. But Lance was a human being, too: he had a big family in Cuba, he had sisters and brothers and cousins and parents and friends who loved him and cared about him. He had people to go back to on Earth; he was fighting for something personal, not just injustice or tyranny. He had feelings too, insecurities about his place on the team and hero worship for Shiro and camaraderie with the team.

Keith had purposely poked at Lance’s cargo pilot beginnings because he knew that Lance had always been insecure about it. He’d taken advantage of something he’d been trusted with the moment Voltron formed.

His shoulders dropped. “Lo siento,” Keith said slowly, probably butchering the pronunciation, but hopefully the thought would count.

“Ooh, estoy orgulloso de ti,” Lance replied, quickly bouncing back from earlier. “Your Spanish is much improved. Tell me, how did you live in Texas your whole life and never speak it?”

Keith recognized the olive branch and answered, “An oversight on my part, I’ll admit. But hey, you’re from _Cuba._ I lived in a desert sixty miles away from _any_ civilization, much less Spanish-speaking civilization.”

“Touché.” Lance poked Keith in the forehead and traipsed off to get food. “Allie, can you repeat that whole plan that I wasn’t here for?”

Allura’s brow furrowed in what Keith could only assume was rage. “You don’t get to call me that. Also, get the plan from Pidge; I’m not interested in catering to your whims of sloth.”

Lance shoved a very large spoonful of food goo in his mouth. “Wha’er.”

“Lance, you must respect Allura a great deal more than you do,” Shirogane said icily. “She is the strategic and logistical backbone of this team and without her, you would have to spend thousands of years flying from quadrant to quadrant instead of a few minutes. She is also trained in Altean martial arts and groomed to lead a planet from birth. Please get over your alien crush for ten ticks and actually see her as a strong person instead of a damsel.”

Allura, Lance, Pidge, and Keith all blinked in bemusement and just plain shock. “Wow. Thank you, Shiro,” Allura managed after a few ticks of dead silence. “While I appreciate that, I can defend myself.” Shirogane nodded in agreement and shrugged an apology. “Also...what crush?”

Lance backed away with his hands raised in surrender. “I’m sorry, Allura. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I thought we were bantering or something, I just don’t know how banter works because I’m not good at talking to people, especially people who are so intimidatingly awesome as you. So. I’m sorry,” he replied in one long exhale, striding quickly out of the room. He left his unfinished breakfast behind.

“That’s a start,” Shirogane muttered. Keith punched him in his Galra arm and immediately regretted it. “You think he was any better in my reality? ‘Creepy’ isn’t how you should describe a teammate you spend 40% of your time within a communal mind meld.”

“Lance is an idiot, but he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

Shirogane scoffed. “He may not right now, but Allie brings out strange things in him. Actually, it’s pretty unhealthy. Once he gets a grip on reality and how to respectfully treat other people, he’ll be better. Don’t wait until he becomes like my Lance.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I can’t really count on you to be unbiased about Lance’s dickishness.”

“Fine, my fellow Lance-related hypocrite. But trust me, life on the castle will improve from here on out.” Shirogane patted Keith on the shoulder and left the couch.

Keith couldn’t help but feel a sense of terrifying deja vu with the mission in mind and the discussion about Lance and the Spanish ringing through the air. These events, they’d happened before.

Or they were happening somewhere else.

Keith remembered dreaming of a world, a world so similar to his but shot through with confusion and shock and terrible pain, like the universe was falling apart, imploding and tearing itself to shreds. And Lance was angry and Pidge despairing and Allura gone and Kolivan resigned and tired. But those weren’t his emotions.

Someone else, across realities, had been transmitting their emotions to him.

_Shiro?_ Keith mentally shouted. _Can you hear me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lo siento - I'm sorry  
> Estoy orgulloso de ti - I'm proud of you  
> Sometimes I forget that one of my beta readers doesn't speak Spanish, or more accurately, read my fairly rudimentary and pathetic English-speaker Spanish. :P So here are some translations, L and wider readership. If any true Spanish-speakers know of more correct or more concise or more culturally-appropriate Spanish usage, please tell me. I would really appreciate the insight. :)


	6. don't go to war for me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "We Won't" by Jaymes Young and Phoebe Ryan.  
> My betas work so hard to make sure I'm not putting nonsensical ramblings on the Internet so thank you guys so much :) I really appreciate the time you take from your lives to read my stuff. And your love-lives. Basically, you guys should be knighted.

“Does anybody know the timeline on the scaultrite?” Shiro asked into the communicator.

Hunk sputtered, “Just so you guys all understand, weblums are terrifying creatures with evil digestive jellyfish. And Lance is not helping.”

“I am, too!” Lance said, probably grabbing the comm out of Hunk’s hands. “Pero es difícil para destruir esas cosas! Hay miles de ellos y solo dos de nosotros. Plus, Coran’s instructions from over ten thousand decaphoebs ago are nearly unwatchable. We basically walked into this disaster entirely unprepared.”

Shiro sighed. “I know it’s hard. Keith-” he cut himself off, “Anyway, it’s doable. Teamwork is necessary but that’s what being Voltron is all about. I believe in you.”

He hung up the call before Hunk or Lance could protest further.

“It’s strange to talk about scaultrite again,” Pidge remarked quietly from their spot on the couch. They’d been finding a way to salvage Allura’s essence from the castle to power one last wormhole. All the scaultrite in the known universe wouldn’t mean anything if nothing could power the teludav. “Our Shiro’s been on it so long and we’ve been ignoring it so long that it’s strange. Well,” they laughed bitterly, “I’ve been ignoring it.”

“You did the best you could,” Shiro replied. He didn’t have to know what Pidge had done to support it.

“Did I, though?” Pidge shook their head. “I was in charge of his health and wellbeing. I knew something was wrong and I just took blood tests and gave him stern warnings. We had no use for the teludav anyway, why didn’t I just lock up or destroy that part of the ship? Why didn’t I ask Coran about dust before he left?” They paused. “Why didn’t I talk to Shiro about it?”

“You did what you knew how to do.” Shiro felt awkward answering questions about a situation he hadn’t experienced. “Talking about serious issues can be nerve-wracking.”

“Sure. But that doesn’t get me off the hook.”

He huffed. “If you want me to blame you, I will. But I just want to help.”

A small smile spread across Pidge’s face. “Got it.” They set their laptop down and stood up, stretching. “So,” they broke off with a yawn, “when they get back, what’s our objective?”

“We have to find Slav. Because he can see across realities, he can be entirely certain that this plan will work, all of the reality-based discrepancies aside. It’s also good to have another few sets of hands, considering we have to replace Coran, Allura, and Keith’s roles in the original plan.”

“You know where he’ll be?”

“A prison called Beta Traz. I know what he looks like and what the security will likely include, making our trip shorter and more efficient.”

Pidge inclined their head, folding their arms. “When are you going to reach out to Commander Keith?”

Sighing, Shiro ran his fingers along the plates in his Galra arm. Just the question he’d hoped to avoid. “I want to make sure we can complete the plan without him before I try to contact him. We can’t count on him fully, even if he does decide to help us. I won’t let him become irreplaceable to Voltron and then betray you. The team deserves better than that.” Well, that was part of it. In reality, he couldn’t bear to raise his expectations. He couldn’t let himself get attached to someone who likely wanted the destruction of Voltron, the Coalition, and the Blades. More importantly, he couldn’t let himself get attached to _Keith_ again.

In the mindscape, Shiro had reached out every tick of every quintent to communicate with his teammates, to tell them where he’d been. But at some point (because time flowed strangely through the void), he realized that even if he could speak to someone, he had no idea what he’d tell them. Shiro couldn’t leave the mindscape; his body had disintegrated. His presence would be a constant source of pain for the team because they had no way of pulling him from the mindscape and they had already grieved him and moved on. Shiro finally comprehended that staying dead, staying out of Voltron’s way, was the best thing he could do for them.

He let everyone go.

Coran first; Shiro hadn’t known him very well and they hadn’t bonded much. Hunk and Lance next; people who could do without him, who could be courageous, amazing people now that Shiro wasn’t standing in their way. Allura next; he’d formed a connection with her based on shared leadership and shared Galra-related trauma, but she had flourished without him before and could do so again. Pidge penultimate; Shiro had watched them grow up, watched their brother and father disappear before his eyes, but Pidge had always been smarter than him, stronger than him, could stare down evil and defeat it with intellect and diamond determination.

Keith at the last. Shiro had been holding onto him so tight, screaming through the void to try and reach him, pushing at the Red Lion and begging her to relay his messages, but nothing worked. The harder he tried, the less energy he could retain in the mindscape. Shiro’s consciousness eventually began to drift.

Accepting his own obstruction from the outside world was simple after that. Shiro remembered thinking absently that caring didn’t matter when he couldn’t supply enough energy to do so. He spent the remaining time in Black’s mindscape floating in a room of stars, half asleep, half aware.

Shiro realized when he arrived in this reality that he hadn’t let everyone go as easily as he thought. He immediately jumped onto their problems, asked for their trust. But Commander Keith wouldn’t respond to him in the same way that the rest of the team did, and Shiro couldn’t let himself pretend that he would. Commander Keith was uncharted territory.

Shiro had to bring the exhaustion back, bring the cold and dark and timelessness back. He had to let his attachments go.

He could not hold out hope for Commander Keith.

“Shiro?” Pidge asked.

He blinked. “Sorry. I got lost in my thoughts.”

“Anything interesting?” Pidge teased gently.

“The mindscape.” Shiro paused. “I guess I haven’t really contemplated it yet. I was alone in this dark emptiness for so long, the whole time trying to let go of the people I cared about because there was no hope, no hope of me getting back to them, no hope of making any of this easier. That’s all I wanted, you know. I wanted it to be less painful, less sad. I wanted my friends to look back on me and just think about the good days, not me dying and them unable to help. But Keith will always blame himself, and Lance and Hunk and Allura and my Pidge will always think about me like the one who had to fight Zarkon all alone and they’ll be so sad. And,” he said, trying to breathe without a sob, “I tried to let go. But I can’t. And I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t be alive anymore in my reality, because I have these moments with you and Lance and Hunk now and I’m thinking about my Keith and this Keith and it’ll hurt so much to lose you all over again.”

Pidge had frozen up uncomfortably but now moved forward to wrap their arms around him. Shiro put a hand on their head and tried to focus on breathing. That was embarrassing, he shouldn’t have broken down like that. He was supposed to keep it together, keep the team together.

“I’m sorry,” he exhaled.

“It’s okay. Somehow it’ll be okay,” Pidge said, their voice muffled against his chest.

“I hope so.” He tried to match his breaths with Pidge’s, create a cycle of in and out. _Patience yields focus._

A notion suddenly struck Shiro. “Would there be any way to contact the Red Lion through our joined consciousness?”

“Perhaps,” Pidge replied, eyebrow slightly raised. “Didn’t you say that you couldn’t talk to anyone from your reality while you existed in the mindscape, though?”

“I was dead, I had nothing but my mind and I expended too much energy trying to reach out on channels I couldn’t access anymore. But I have a body now, and a physical source of energy. If we focus the combined energies of ourselves and our lions, we can pull Red and the commander into the consciousness with us, right?”

Pidge cocked their head. “I can understand your theory from a ‘parts wanting to be whole’ standpoint, they were made from the same inter-reality comet ore, but what makes you think our lions are even capable of communicating across such a distance, much less reaching a pilot not fully connected with his lion?”

Running a hand through his hair, Shiro answered, “Distance isn’t the problem. Their mental bond with each other is unbreakable. Red knows the others and will answer now that all lions are actualized. Keith...well, I can only hope he’ll hear us. But we have to try.”

“I hate taking risks like this,” Pidge told him flatly. “He’s done nothing but make our lives miserable and you want to traipse after him in the hopes that he’ll suddenly have a moral epiphany.”

Shiro sighed. “Besides killing Allura, what else is he responsible for?”

Beginning to pace, Pidge replied, “I forget that you haven’t been here, so you don’t know the extent. He’s been in the game for maybe five or six decaphoebs, the youngest ever promoted to commander. He’s led charges against several rebel groups and decimated their planets. He gave the order to kill Allura, yes, but he also has been thwarting our efforts since Voltron first came together: sending reinforcements to the Balmera, spying on us through Sendak’s vessels, boxing us into this quadrant. It’s like he was on a knife’s edge before that, but the moment Voltron formed, he sprung into action.”

“How close are he and Zarkon?”

“Zarkon thinks he’s amazing, trusts him with the highest level of clearance as far as we can tell.”

“Dangerous, then.”

“Very. He has the ear of the Galra emperor and virtually unlimited resources since he’s been the main instigator of planet-wide quintessence-harvesting.”

“And why did he desert the Blades?”

“Kolivan said he harbored resentment because Kolivan hadn’t disclosed the details of his mother’s undercover mission.”

“I have to call bullshit on that,” Shiro declared. “None of Kolivan’s explanations make sense. Keith dealt with the same feelings of abandonment in my reality, and it only made him more stubborn and more attached. He never would have left the Blades to participate in galactic tyranny in the first place, much less because he felt abandoned by his mom.”

“He always had something else to hold onto,” Pidge replied quietly. “Maybe he never went dark-side in your reality because you were there to keep him back.”

“It can’t be that simple.” Shiro suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe. “I can’t be his only barrier between fighting with us and fighting with the Galra, that’s not fair. He has some free will left, he has to.”

“You’re digging yourself into a hole, Shiro. I hate to say this, but while your absence may have altered how Keith thought about himself, he still continued doing terrible things to other planets and species given every chance to change in this reality. He had the free will to terrorize others, to follow the orders of an evil emperor and give evil orders himself, to attack us and toy with us.” They paused. “He killed Allura.”

“There must be a reason,” Shiro said desperately.

“Not one you can rationalize with our current experiences and data,” they replied slowly. And wasn’t that a strange statement?

“You’re giving me permission to go after him,” Shiro realized.

Pidge sighed. “Give me a reason to trust Keith. And it had better be a good one.”

* * *

 “Hunk? What did the Yellow Lion tell you about Shiro’s efforts to find Commander Keith?”

The comm crackled to life. “He found him, alright. Practically visited once a week. Maybe for surveillance purposes, maybe he was trying to infiltrate. Yellow can’t conjecture much further than that.”

“Please thank him for his help,” Shiro said, orienting himself inside the Black Lion.

“I will.” Hunk paused. “Punch Commander Keith in the face for me, would you? I normally wouldn’t resort to that, but he is really awful.”

“You got it,” Shiro answered, a tiny smile on his face. He pulled up the route Yellow found onto Black’s screens and jetted forward, leaving the hangar and flying into the darkness.

The commander had stationed a cruiser at the edge of the quadrant that was accessible to the other Shiro and definitely close enough to mount an attack without warning. He’d been in this strategic position for quintents, according to the flight logs that Yellow had sent over. No attempts to contact the paladins had been made, and no advances further into the quadrant.

Altogether, Shiro found it extremely suspicious. If Commander Keith was really as bloodthirsty and cunning as Pidge had made him out to be, why hadn’t he attacked yet? Also, if the other Shiro had known where the cruiser was stationed, why hadn’t he told the paladins?

Pidge had let Shiro borrow the cloaking they’d developed, with Shiro’s solemn promise to give the code back when he returned. He plugged it in and flew into the cruiser’s airspace, careful to avoid flying close to any patrols that could identify him by sight rather than radar. Cloaking created a ripple in the space around the lion, visible to anyone looking closely enough. His plan was to enter the hangar closest to the ion cannon, given the lack of personnel right next to the dangerous weapon.

Shiro pressed his Galra hand to the Black Lion’s screen and transmitted the virus that would help him open the hangar without being detected. Sometimes having Galra technology melded with his body was useful. The hangar doors soundlessly slid open and Shiro unbuckled his seat belt, slipping his helmet on. It’d be incredibly arrogant to bring the Black Lion into a Galra cruiser without certainty that the Galra wouldn’t be able to steal her. So Shiro left the Black Lion in space and propelled himself into the cruiser’s hangar.

The Black Lion knew that if he sent a distress signal, she would return to the Castle of Lions and get reinforcements. It was the only way he could keep her safe and not jeopardize the wider mission: defeating Zarkon.

Once inside, he shut the hangar doors and hid behind a pillar to do recon. The cruiser’s security mostly consisted of sentries, not drones. Galra personnel were limited, given that harvesting quintessence only required four druids and a harvesting device. Shiro noted the harvesting device, but only one druid was on board. Five other Galra soldiers occupied a hangar on the other end of the ship, in close proximity to each other.

A power source signaled through Shiro’s arm. The signal was identical to the beacon that Allura had used to triangulate the positions of the lions when they first arrived in Erus. The Red Lion had to be here.

And Commander Keith had to be here if the Red Lion was here.

Finally, Shiro located an isolated dot somewhere in the middle of the ship that didn’t exactly match the Galra color-code. Closing the screen, Shiro moved out from behind the pillar and began striding down the hallway toward it.

He neatly beheaded all the sentries that noticed his presence; most sentries were in groups of two and didn’t have automatic warning systems, so no Galra personnel were alerted. Nothing impeded him, but Shiro did wonder about the druid because he would have a difficult time trying to fight them off by himself.

_The downside of going in without backup,_ Shiro thought to himself.

He was one corridor away from what he assumed was Commander Keith’s position when he heard footsteps nearby. Shiro ducked in a cell doorway and kept very still and quiet.

“We’ve exhausted the planetary resources in this area,” the druid was saying slimily.

“You are here for a very specific purpose and easily replaceable. You dare question my authority again and I will deposit your worthless corpse into space,” Keith’s voice spat in response. And damn, did that hurt. Shirogane wished it didn’t sound like Keith.

“I am your advisor on this vessel. I simply wish to advise.” Shiro assumed the druid saluted. “Vrepit sa.”

Commander Keith stalked past Shiro’s hiding place almost without seeing him. Unfortunately, hiding in a doorway left one invisible to people on either side of it, but not directly in front of it.

Without shouting ‘intruder!’ or attempting to kill him, the commander crowded Shiro back against the door to the cell and came face to face with him. Commander Keith’s eyes were just as bright with rage as in his picture. Somehow, Shiro felt immobile.

Suddenly, the door behind Shiro slid open (the commander had probably entered the unlock code) and Commander Keith was pushing him through.

“You fucking idiot,” he spat, the door sliding shut behind them. “What were you thinking, coming on the cruiser without using the signal?” Commander Keith looked restless, like he wanted to start pacing. “I’ll have to replace those sentries, you asshole.”

Shiro didn’t answer, absentmindedly fiddling with the plates on his Galra arm. He really had to get rid of that habit.

Commander Keith raised an eyebrow. “Is your brain so full of shine that you can’t recall the signal that we developed over a decaphoeb ago and never changed?”

Shiro wasn’t sure how to respond to that question without lying, so he shrugged.

The commander looked worried all of the sudden, well, Keith’s version of worried. It was more shouty. “Snap out of it!” he said, slapping Shiro in the face.

_Oh no,_ Shiro thought.

It all came rushing back. He was on a Galra vessel, trapped in a cell with the vicious, power-mad version of his best friend; and apparently, they had a _signal._ The commander had killed Allura, and he was dangerous.

Shiro lit up his arm and held it a hairsbreadth from Commander Keith’s throat. “Where is the Red Lion?”

The commander held up his hands in surrender. “What are you talking about? What do you know about Red?”

“You have her trapped here. I need to see her.”

Commander Keith’s facial expression froze. “How would you know that?”

Shiro gestured with his arm just wildly enough to make the commander wince. “Take me to her. If you try anything, Zarkon will have one less minion to kill planets for him.”

“Fine.” Schooling his features as he put his façade back on, the commander carefully opened the cell door and walked out, Shiro’s one hand gripping his shoulder and the other poised at his neck. Any sentries that would have seen them, Shiro had already dispatched. The singular druid never crossed their path.

Commander Keith led them toward the end of the cruiser that Shiro had come from, turning down the hallway adjacent to the hangar Shiro had breached. “You should know,” the commander said petulantly, “that she won’t talk to you. She only talks to me.”

“I’m aware,” Shiro replied tersely.

“What is going on with you? It’s like you’re a different person, Shiro, what happened?” And he looked so strange, so unlike the picture, so unlike the stories Pidge and the others had told him. “How much dust did you snort before you got here? You fucking rebooted.”

“How often do I visit that you presume to know anything about me?” Shiro said scathingly. This Keith had seemed so _concerned_ and he wasn’t supposed to feel like that about Shiro. They were enemies, they hated each other. The commander was evil and Shiro wasn’t supposed to have any hope whatsoever.

“Not as often as I thought,” the commander muttered in response. He opened the hangar with a twenty-digit password and stepped inside.

Shiro dropped his hands with the shock of seeing Red again. He’d only felt her in Black’s mind, amorphous and sharp and berating, but fiercely protective. He’d felt her move, felt her fly. And here she was, made manifest. Gigantic and powerful.

“They don’t know that I can talk to her.” His skin flushed dark mauve, rather than lavender. Sometimes Shiro forgot how young Keith was; he’d been terrorizing the empire as a nineteen-year-old half-human, and Shiro had to marvel at that. “I never told them what she says.”

“What does she say?” Red was isolated, she hadn’t had much opportunity to talk to the other lions, much less make contact with the other paladins.

The commander walked forward slowly and placed his hand on her leg. “Why the hell would I tell you what she said?” he asked calmly. “You never asked before, and you personally think I’m the abominable scum of the galaxy. I’m the evil little pup that you just can’t bring yourself to kill yet.” He scoffed. “Or you’re too-” he spat out a Galra word that Krolia had used, “-in the head to get the job done.”

Shiro shook his head. “Does she want you to go home? To bond with us?”

“Home?” He laughed bitterly. “The empire is my home. I’ve fought for it for a third of my life.”

“That doesn’t make it your home. You were part of the Blades of Marmora before that. You had comrades, you had a parent.”

“Who left me!” The commander clenched his hand into a fist and turned to face Shiro. “She took an undercover mission and flew several quadrants away to serve the Blades. I thought she was going to come back, but she stayed away. Missed my whole life for a mysterious weapon that had no master.”

“You knew.”

“Of course I knew! Kolivan may be older than Zarkon’s glorious reign but he is a bad fucking liar.”

Shiro ran a hand through his hair. “How can that be possible? He’s the one who told us who you were and how you got here. He couldn’t have lied about all of that.”

“Questioning my motives now, are you?” The commander smirked.

“I’m trying to find the truth,” Shiro insisted.

The commander leaned back against Red and folded his arms. “Since when? Three quintents ago, you were the same vibrantly shiny, paranoid asshole that beat on me when he visited. You’ve never cared about my reasons and yet, you still used me as a coping mechanism for your own inadequacies. Now, your mood shifts every minute, you seem disconnected from reality and you’re suddenly concerned with my childhood?” He paused. “I murdered your best friend. End of story. Leave Red and I alone and go home.”

“He did that to you?” Shiro asked blankly. “He hit you?”

“Yes, you fucking hit me. I hit you, too. We were sparring partners. And now,” the commander huffed, “you’re dissociating from yourself.”

“I’m not dissociating.”

The commander abruptly reached forward to grab Shiro by the arm and led him into the cockpit of the Red Lion. “What are you doing?” Shiro asked, trying to pull away.

“You need medical care. I can’t do that on my ship, not the kind you need, so I’m going to drop you off a safe distance from the castle and transfer you to Black so she can take you the rest of the way.”

“They’ll know you have Red,” Shiro protested. “Why would you do that?”

A pained expression crossed Commander Keith’s face. “They already suspected. I’ll just be confirming the rumors.”

“I don’t understand,” Shiro said helplessly. Nothing made sense, not the way the commander was acting, not what he said, not the facts Shiro thought he knew. His mind felt overwhelming and cluttered and sticky and pointed and-

He heard a voice in his head. And it sounded like Keith, his Keith.

_“Shiro? Can you hear me?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pero es difícil para destruir esas cosas - But it's hard to destroy these things  
> Hay miles de ellos y solo dos de nosotros - There are thousands of them and only two of us


	7. fall into the earth, heavy as a feather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "First" by Cold War Kids.  
> My goal was to publish this on Christmas. And then I remembered the very unfinished, time-sensitive documents sitting on my computer. *wince* so, it's a bit late, but I hope you guys enjoy. Also, thank you to my betas, C and L. Even though you spent ep 10 of Yuri on Ice arguing about whether dogs or cats are better even though you have both. *insincere glare*

Keith blinked as a sudden wave of shock and uncomprehending disorientation washed over him. Not his emotions, he knew now. Shiro’s emotions.

But the wave never retreated; it just kept coming and coming and Keith could barely stand with the force of it.

“Keith?” Shirogane asked, sounding like he was shouting from across the castle. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he replied, his vision phasing in and out with a pounding headache rapidly flooding down through his face and neck.

“What is your pain level on a scale from one to ten?” Pidge briskly came forward and took his pulse, seeming to shake their head at the results.

“It’s not my pain,” Keith insisted. “It’s his.”

“Whose?” Shirogane demanded.

“Shiro’s.” Keith huffed out a jagged laugh. “He’s...alive.”

And he fell. 

* * *

_"You absolute fucker, what is wrong with you, why the hell would you cross the quadrant in this state, you complete idiot, why do I even talk to you when you do things like this, I should fucking kill you myself, you self-destructive bastard, are you even aware right now…”_

_His eyes blinked open to see a lavender-skinned version of Keith (_ **_himself_ ** _) at the helm of the Red Lion, managing to fly the ship and yell at him (_ **_Shiro, you’re alive!_ ** _) at the same time. They were heading back to the castle and Black was following close behind (_ **_she’d kept Shiro alive somehow?_ ** _)._

_“You have some nerve, showing up on my cruiser shiny out of your mind and basically a vegetable, not remembering the fucking code, are you insane, get your head out of your ass for two ticks and you’ll realize that the world doesn’t cater to your whims…”_

_The castle drew nearer and nearer in the viewport as Shiro (_ _ **Keith** )_ _blinked slowly and tried to sit up. He’d been lying on the floor in the cockpit, limbs splayed like he’d collapsed there ( **had the other Keith done something to Shiro?**_ ), _but sitting up proved much more difficult than it seemed._

_“You lay the fuck back down, you could barely walk when I brought you in here.” The other Keith glared at Shiro (_ **_Keith_ ** _) and he laid back down, relaxing his pained muscles into the cool metal ground (_ **_being berated by himself felt really strange_ ** _)._

* * *

“He’s not responding,” Pidge said, the sound of their worried footsteps fading as they walked away.

“Keith, can you hear me?” Shirogane (my counterpart?) asked, running a hand through Keith’s (Shiro’s) hair.

“I won’t let you stay in this room without taking your pill,” Pidge sniped, handing a silver capsule to Shirogane and forcing his hand away from Keith’s (Shiro’s) head. Shirogane swallowed the pill and drained a glass of water, some of it dripping down his Galra arm (did he lose his arm in the same way I did?) and falling onto Keith’s (his) face.

“Sorry,” Shirogane said, wiping the liquid off his cheek. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“If you’re going to hover, you might as well be useful.” Pidge handed Shirogane a thermometer. “Stick that under his tongue. We can use the ear thermometer, but it’s buried in the cabinet, so I’d prefer we use this one.”

The sudden sensation of smooth glass in his mouth activated his gag reflex and Keith (Shiro) began to cough and cough... 

* * *

_“Black isn’t letting me perform the transfer, dammit, she’s more stubborn than Red.” The other Keith shook his head and shouted, “Black! Why are you forcing me into this situation?”_

_She didn’t answer, but the other Keith slammed his hands into Red’s controls (_ **_get the hell away from her, you asshole!_ ** _). Red knocked him over with a vengeful tilt sideways (_ **_good girl_ ** _)_ _._

_“It’s your fault, you know.” The other Keith (_ **_the Commander? Calling him the ‘other one’ was getting weird_ ** _) sighed, slumping into the pilot’s chair and nudging Shiro’s (_ **_Keith’s_ ** _) leg with his toes ( **he’s barefoot?** ). “Black gets all her stubbornness from you. Zarkon has nothing on your complete inability to let things go.” _

_Shiro (_ **_Keith_ ** _) tried to raise his head again but failed._

_“I’ll just have to take you into the castle myself. I’m sure that’s what she wants. She wants me to be exposed.” He paused. “Never mind that, she wants me to expose myself.”_

_Commander Keith didn’t touch the controls again, but Red flew into the castle’s firing range anyway. The castle’s defenses came up, the guns poised to barrage the ship, but the commander didn’t fire, he simply opened a communication channel._

_“Are you missing something?” he asked, a new vicious tone to his voice (_ **_this guy only has two moods: berating and evil_ ** _)._

_Pidge answered the call with shock on their face, which quickly schooled itself into impassiveness. “What did you do to him?”_

_“I did nothing to him,” the commander protested (_ **_doubtful_ ** _). “He fucking invaded my ship, dispatched 75 percent of my sentries and then collapsed. He’s clearly deranged, and I advise you take him off active duty for the foreseeable future.”_

_“What did he say to you?”_

_“Asked if I wanted to ‘come home’, whatever the fuck that means. He’s hit the dust too hard.”_

_“He was correct about one thing, however,” Pidge said, looking cunningly triumphant (_ **_their best expression, honestly. I definitely don’t want to be on the receiving end of it, though_ ** _)._

_“Oh, really? This lump of strung-out flesh?” Commander Keith hissed._

_“He said that you’d have Red. That you were protecting her from the Galra. Now, why would the premiere commander in the Galra Empire, with the ear of the Emperor himself, keep something like that to himself?”_

_( **i**_ **_agree, that makes no sense at all_** _)_

_Shiro (_ **_Keith_ ** _) suddenly began coughing, coughing so hard he felt like he would vomit. The commander immediately dropped down from his pilot’s chair to check Shiro’s (_ **_Keith’s_ ** _) breathing. “I didn’t do anything to him, he just started hacking, please let me in so you can help him.”_

_Pidge lowered the castle’s defenses._

* * *

Keith’s coughing passed out of his body (into my other body) and his breathing quieted as if nothing had happened.

“Temperature is 39 degrees Celsius,” Shirogane said, face going pale. He moved out of Keith’s (Shiro’s) view and came back with a cold, damp cloth, one for his forehead and one for his neck.

“His body could be trying to expel some foreign entity,” Pidge surmised. “But where would he have gotten it?”

Shirogane shook his head. “He said the pain wasn’t his.” He paused. “Your Shiro could be the invader, but is that even possible?”

“Has Keith ever talked about feeling transference? Emotions that weren’t his, or seemingly irrational reactions to situations?”

The cold seeped into Keith’s (Shiro’s) head, slowing his thoughts and the pain clattering around his brain (is this mine? Did I cause this? Quiznak, I never meant to).

“Heart rate stabilized from 130 beats per dobash to 76.” Pidge briskly smacked Shirogane in the shoulder. “Well, has he?”

“I don’t know enough about this Keith to determine that,” Shirogane replied desperately. “He’s dealing very badly with his grief for the other Shiro, I know that much.” (i never meant for this to happen, to Keith of all people)( **just because you let go when you left doesn’t mean I will** )

A sharp wave of hurt prickled across Keith’s ( **our** ) skin and he began shivering, his eyelids fluttering like he was dreaming.

Pidge held him down. “I may have to put him in a cryochamber. I know it’s not the best solution but I’m not a doctor, and I don’t know what’s going on. I can at least put him into stasis until I can figure out the true source of the problem.”

Frowning, Shirogane took the cloth off Keith’s ( **our** ) neck and replaced it with a colder one. “You’ll only be treating the symptoms, the fever, the chills. You know just as well as I do that the cryochamber can’t fix what’s in his mind, just like it can’t fix my,” he spat, “addiction.”

“Until we know for sure that all of this is in his mind, we can’t do anything more about it,” Pidge replied authoritatively.

“I’ll stay with him.”

“I know.” 

* * *

_Black flew into the main hangar ahead of them (_ **_ahead of us_ ** _). The commander didn’t attempt to evade the tractor beam keeping him from maneuvering beyond where Pidge directed him and the Red Lion. “They can help you,” he said, restlessly fiddling with Red’s controls. “I’m not a fucking doctor, I don’t know what’s going on.”_

_(_ **_why are you helping us? We thought you hated us_ ** _)_

_Pidge rushed into the hangar as soon as the airlock doors closed, pushing a medical cot ahead of them. “We need to get him laid down. I have absolutely no idea why he’s exhibiting these symptoms.”_

_Commander Keith effortlessly picked Shiro (_ **_us_ ** _) off the cockpit floor, cradling his head and neck as best he could. He arranged Shiro (_ ** _us_ ** _) on the cot, Pidge pulling a blood pressure cuff and a blood oxygenation/heartbeat device out of their huge pockets. The commander stood aside for a moment, looking frozen, as if he wanted to move forward but got stuck (_ **_Pidge shouldn’t have to take all those stats down alone, you ass_ ** _)(_ _we don’t know whether we can trust him yet_ _)(_ **_would you say the same thing about me?_ ** _)(_ _you know that’s not what I mean_ _)_

_“86 over 58 blood pressure. Was he dehydrated when he arrived?” Pidge asked. “Blood oxygenation at 100%, probably hyperventilation, heartbeat at 130 per dobash but dropping.” They paused. “Well?”_

_“I don’t think so. I don’t exactly monitor his fluid intake.”_

_“Shit.” Pidge started propelling the cot out of the hangar. “He might be going into shock.”_

_“Can an overdose on dust cause shock?” the commander wondered._

_Raising an eyebrow, Pidge momentarily stopped the cot. “First of all, how do you know about Shiro’s problem? And secondly, this Shiro isn’t on dust.”_

_“He visits,” the commander replied cagily (_ **_strange that he would comment on the dust thing_ ** _)(_ _he visits? The commander and the other Shiro are enemies )_ _(_ **_weird that I’m ahead of the curve on this one_ ** _)(_ **_basically, he and the other Keith are sparring buddies. Like really unhealthy friends_ ** _)_

_(_ **_although, that doesn’t explain why he looks so concerned_ ** _)_

_“He visits?” Pidge raised their other eyebrow. “Fine, I don’t care, we’ll deal with that later. Did he just suddenly drop or were there other symptoms before that?”_

_“He just seemed crazier than usual,” Commander Keith answered defensively. “I didn’t know this would happen. Also, you’re delusional if you think that he suddenly just stopped using.”_

_“This Shiro isn’t from our reality. He’s never used dust, and I purged all the dust from the castle as soon as I knew where he came from. Plus, I sent him on a mission to find you, and he seemed physically healthy when I did. So, unless you give me a reason to suspect that you had something to do with this, be helpful or leave.”_

_The commander seemed jarred and off-kilter, but he grabbed the cot. “Direct me to your infirmary.”_

_(_ **_he looks...scared_ ** _)_

* * *

“I know you probably can’t hear me. Everything gets fuzzy in those cryotubes. But if you can hear me, you have to fight him off. If this is the physical representation of Shiro’s emotions, I don’t think he’s good for you. I mean, being thrown into a foreign reality after being dead must be incredibly traumatizing, especially since he’s lost his main support system. But...you shouldn’t have to bear the weight of that, too.”

( **you weirdo, stop being all nice to me. My feelings probably fucked him over more** )

“I wouldn’t wish my own...PTSD or whatever on anybody, much less on you. You don’t deserve that.”

( **yeah, and you don’t need to give them to Commander Angry-Face either. Your relationship is bad enough** )

“Just, please fight his emotions. It’s not healthy for either of you.” The shadow of Shirogane’s Galra hand pressed against the glass of the cryotube. Keith (Shiro) couldn’t reach back, as much as he wanted to.

( **i can feel you beating yourself up from across realities, Shiro** )(i never wanted to hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt. He’s right, you never deserved this)( **hey, don’t invalidate my grief. My grief is a fucking painful ball of guts and doesn’t appreciate you underestimating it** )(*sigh*)( **don’t sass me** )

(i missed you. So much)

Keith (Shiro) can feel his chest expand with an audible intake of breath. ( **ditto. You have no idea** )

(*laugh* you forget I’m inside your head)

( **no, really** )( **you remember when Zarkon pulled the quintessence out of the lions and it hurt individually but you could feel everyone else’s pain through the bond?** )( **think that, but multiply by ten for every day you were gone** )

Silence rang through the room, Shirogane having sat on the ground by Keith’s ( **our** ) cryochamber and leaning against it as the cold numbly moved through Keith’s ( **our** ) body.

(i’m sorry)

( **dying wasn’t your fucking fault. I’m just saying, don’t take all the credit for our current state of being** )

Shirogane’s breathing began to slow, and his Galra arm fully relaxed on the ground beside him.

( **sleep well** ) 

* * *

_Pidge sighed. “Giving me a heart attack for no reason. He’s stabilizing.”_

_The commander scoffed, leaning against the wall in the corner. He stared at Shiro’s (_ ** _our_** _)_ _body on the cot, breathing a little heavier from pushing it down to the infirmary. “You’re dead sure he’s not shiny?”_

_“Yes,” Pidge snapped. “Very sure. But I have no idea what’s causing this vacillation in his condition, nor how to stabilize it.”_

_(_ **_sorry. We barely know why this is happening either_ ** _)_

_The commander stiffly rocked back and forth on his heels. “When did the crossover happen? When did this Shiro get here?”_

_“A few quintents ago. I reacted much like you did, actually. I thought he’d been hitting the dust and I didn’t believe him.” They paused. “But he really is from another reality. He defeated Zarkon in his reality. Allura is still alive there.”_

_Commander Keith almost imperceptibly flinched._

_(_ **_he killed her, right?_ ** _)(_ _yeah_ _)_

_“What am I in the other place?”_

_Pidge laughed bitterly. “Someone it hurt him to leave.” They checked the blood oxygenation device (_ ** _i happen to know that’s called an oximeter_** _)_ _again. “98%. Heart rate 64.” Tapping the IV they’d inserted into Shiro’s (_ ** _our_** _) arm to release more fluid, they continued, “Tell me the truth. Why did you bring him here? You could have killed him, you could have held him for ransom, you could have turned him over to Zarkon or performed experiments on him. Instead, you vacate your cruiser piloting a powerful weapon wanted across the galaxy by the Galra. You let me use the tractor beam to bring you in. I’m not the tactician of this operation,” (_ ** _yeah right_** _) “but that doesn’t sit right with me.”_

_Shrinking into himself a little, the commander studied his bare feet._

_“I can wait until you’re ready to talk,” Pidge asserted. “This whole war is at an impasse and I have all the time in the world.” They laid a gentle hand on Shiro’s (_ **_our_ ** _) human arm. “He’s got time, too.”_

_“I don’t need a lot of time,” he said finally. “But I could use a moment.”_

_He never came closer to the form on the cot, but he never left the room. Pidge didn’t speak again._

_(_ **_no one is as one-dimensional as Shirogane made the commander seem_ ** _)(_ _there’s something off *pause*_ _)(_ _what did Shirogane say about him?_ _)_

_(_ **_he’s angry and remorseless_ ** _)(_ **_he never answered when Shirogane asked him why he killed Allura_ ** _)_

_(_ _he likely felt he didn’t have to justify it_ _)_

_“Kolivan told you I left,” the commander said abruptly._

_Pidge nodded._

_“He told you I deserted because I felt abandoned or something like that?”_

_Pidge nodded._

_“That wasn’t true. I found out where my mom was posted but I didn’t leave.”_

_Pidge shrugged as if asking him to continue._

_“I always wanted to be like her. She was strong, she was powerful, she was everything to me. I didn’t have any other family.” He paused. “You know, full Galra don’t look like me.”_

_Pidge frowned._

_“My dad must have been from another race. I had to prove I was the best, and if I was Krolia’s son, then I wanted to act like it._

_“I didn’t desert. Only cowards desert their cause.”_

_Pidge nodded, briefly glancing toward Shiro’s (_ **_our_ ** _) vitals and focusing back on the commander._

_“My mom was doing incredibly important undercover work. Once I learned what she’d been doing, I wanted to help._

_“I asked Kolivan what position I would have to be in the Galra ranks to do the most damage. He told me I would have to gain Zarkon’s trust, get close to him. Zarkon and Haggar control the empire, control the quintessence keeping the empire from crumbling. Two creatures and the loyalty of millions of souls were between the Blades and victory over the empire. I wanted to fight for my mother, fight for my right to exist as a half-breed.” He paused. “I wanted to prove that I was worth more than just a grunt soldier.”_

_(_ **_you really did kill Allura_ ** _)_

_“I took a ship off the Marmorite base and flew into a war zone. Prowess in battle would get me noticed more than anything else. I must have...I must have killed two hundred lifeforms my first day.” He took a deep breath. “After that it was simple. I moved through the ranks very quickly, battlefield promotions, and eventually became Zarkon’s right hand._

_“I never left the Blades. I never left,” the commander insisted. “I just...I should have faked my death before getting involved with you people….It fucking hurts when he looks at me. Like I’m less than scum because I can’t tell him what’s really happening.” He steeled himself as if waiting for Pidge to hit him. “I never wanted to kill Allura. She was fearless and unflinching in the face of death, and I was ashamed of myself for pulling the trigger.”_

_Commander Keith pushed off from the wall, striding out of the room and down the hall. Pidge went after him and all Shiro (_ ** _we_ ** _) could hear was, “I’m on your side.”_

_“I know,” Pidge replied. “I know now.”_

* * *

(we can defeat Zarkon in this universe now)

( **is that all you have to say? That’s me in there, completely fucked over from having to be a soldier at age twelve** )

(i’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that)

( **in your brain, remember? I know you don’t mean it like that** )( **i just wish he never had to live that way** )

(i know)

( **he’s my age, and already he’s killed hundreds of innocent people** )( **nineteen and he probably has trauma he’ll never recover from** )

(the world shouldn’t be like that)

( **he deserves...** )

(better. You both do)

( ***pause* I want to go back to my body. I have to fix this with Shirogane, he’s been blaming himself for so long** )

(i’ll go back too. I need to make sure this reality is safe from Zarkon, now that I know the commander can help us)

( **you’ll find a way to come back, though, right?** )( **life is a fucking mess without you** )

(scout’s honor)(*smile*)

( **i’m serious** )

(i know. I’m working on it. And Pidge is helping me, so I might actually get somewhere)

( **i may punch you in the face when you get back. Be prepared for that** )

(anything you want) 

* * *

Keith’s eyes flew open, the cold seeping into his muscles suddenly noticeable. He banged on the glass of the cryotube. “Shirogane! Get me out of here!”

Shirogane, shocked out of sleep, fumbled a little with the panel on the side of the chamber, but eventually, Keith stumbled out of the cryotube and onto the floor.

“What happened to you?” Shirogane asked, stalking over to Pidge’s tray of medical equipment and returning with the same instruments Pidge had been testing Shiro with in the other reality.

“Transference,” Keith huffed. “Our combined emotions were so strong that we...melded or something. We occupied the same area of mental space for a while. And two bodies. Together.”

“That…” Shirogane clipped the oximeter on Keith’s finger, “sounds really strange.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“Oxygenation at 98%. Normal. Heartbeat: 70.” Removing the device, Shirogane reached for a thermometer.

“Maybe just use the ear one,” Keith said hastily. “We didn’t react well last time you tried that.”

Shirogane stopped. “Hold on. He was really there with you? Shiro? _Dead_ Shiro?”

Keith shrugged helplessly. “Guess you didn’t switch with a pile of space dust after all.”

He batted at the thermometer; Shirogane had caught him by surprise with the sudden metal contraption in his ear. “What does it say?”

“36.5.” Shirogane threw the thermometer back on the tray. “Normal for just coming out of a cryochamber.”

“Great.” Keith stood up too quickly and staggered a bit, but managed to leave the room without falling.

“Where are you going?” Shirogane ran after him.

“I have to tell everybody Shiro’s alive. And we need to figure out a way to get him back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, the different mindvoices were supposed to have different colors rather than bold and underlined distinctions. If anyone knows how to code color into ao3's program, I would love input.   
> Secondly, the parentheses were interacting strangely with the italic sections, so sorry for the inconsistency there. I just don't want to spend another hour fixing them.   
> No Spanish this chapter, but Lance will definitely come back next chapter!


	8. what a strange being you are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Sick of Losing Soulmates" by dodie. She just recently released a wonderful new EP, so I'm paying tribute to her this chapter.  
> C and L: you rock. You know the drill.

~~~~“No fue una buena idea para dejar a Keith salir del cryotube,” Lance muttered to Hunk.

Keith glared at him. “I’m telling you, Shiro is alive. He’s in the other reality, I talked to him.”

“You collapsed on the ground and then Pidge induced a coma. Your reason can’t be trusted until you look less like you’re going to fall over again.”

“Do you have any proof what you say is true?” Hunk asked gently. “We know you’ve been going through a difficult time and your mind can invent coping mechanisms to deal with this.”

“Shiro isn’t a coping mechanism!” Keith replied, throwing his hands up.

“So you don’t think that given the opportunity, you’d talk to the air like it was a living Shiro.” Lance raised an eyebrow. “I’ve even talked to him a few times. Fake Shiro calms me down.”

“This is different,” Keith asserted, growing even more frustrated. “I heard his voice in my head, he knows what happened to him and he’s dealing with it. But he’s alive, I swear. He had a physical form. We fucking shared bodies. How could I do that any other way?”

“I mean, it’s one way of coping.” Lance murmured something under his breath and Hunk reddened, smacking Lance on the back of the head.

“Can Pidge confirm anything you’ve said?” Hunk inquired, his voice a little higher than normal.

“Maybe? I’m trying to remember which Pidge came up with the transference theory.” Keith frowned. “I feel like it was our Pidge, but I’ll ask.”

“Lovely,” Lance said, folding his arms. “In the meantime, who’s going to tell Allura what’s going on? I volunteer.”

“Are you a masochist or just stupid? You basically threw your feelings up onto her, give her some space.” Keith sullenly grabbed a cookie from the batch Hunk had just finished baking and chomped on it.

“Yes, we needed space. I don’t want to give up, though.” Lance paused. “I know she’s too good for me. I know that. I always knew that. But I want her to know that I’ll support her more in the future. She deserves support.”

“It’s a better foundation to build an emotional connection on,” Hunk remarked quietly.

“She should be a paladin!” Lance blurted out. “She’s fought for the Coalition longer than we have, she’s a natural leader, and she’s lost so much already. Why can’t the lions allow her to pilot?”

“Black rejected all of us,” Keith answered coldly. “She would have accepted Allura if that was what she wanted. But she didn’t, because her paladin is still alive. If another one of us dies, maybe you can ask the lions again.”

Biting his lip, Lance stayed on the couch for a moment before also standing up to grab a cookie. “I think Blue would like her.”

“I think so, too,” Hunk added. He took a cookie and thoughtfully ate it. “I should have put more brown sugar in the batter. They’re a bit too crunchy for my taste.”

“Or you baked them too long,” Lance added.

Keith shook his head. “They’re good, Hunk. Don’t worry about it.”

Hunk sighed. “So we need to ask Pidge whether the theory of transference checks out, right? I should bring them some cookies, they’ve been reading about addiction all day.”

“Fine.” Lance stole an extra cookie. “This is for Allura. It’s a peace offering. I’m going to bring her in on this conversation. Can one of you get Shirogane?”

Keith and Hunk nodded.

“Bueno.” Lance left the room.

“You believe me, don’t you?” Keith asked softly.

Hunk, having started to spoon batter onto the cookie sheet again, paused to contemplate his answer. “I think that Shiro will always exist as a tangible person to you. Whether our Shiro is alive in the other reality or not doesn’t matter. You will always have him.”

“But do you _believe_ me?”

He sighed. “I want to believe you. Shiro means a lot to all of us, and I miss him. But being in denial about his death isn’t healthy.”

Keith scoffed. “Please don’t peddle that ‘five stages of grief’ bullshit. Acceptance is just another word for moving on.”

“Reaching acceptance isn’t about moving on, it’s about allowing our lives to continue in the wake of loss,” Hunk countered. “And your life isn’t continuing. You’re stuck in a holding pattern, and not a sustainable one either.”

“I am living! I get out of bed every morning, I go to the Coalition meetings, I pilot Red.”

“That’s not living, Keith. That’s going through the motions. You’ve been pandering to us to make it look like you’re okay, but you’re not.” Hunk gently kicked the oven, noticing that the timer had temporarily stalled. “We know what that looks like. Lance puts on a good show, but he misses his family. So do I. We have no idea when we’re going to get back to Earth if we’re going back at all. Pidge’s family could be anywhere in the universe right now, alive or dead but still missing. Allura and Coran’s planet was destroyed, their families obliterated. Your dad is dead, and now Shiro too. It’s painful. It hurts every single day. But thinking you’re alone in your loss and holding it by yourself is the worst mistake.”

Keith looked back at Hunk for a few moments, and then laid down on the couch and put his head in his hands. “He’s...real,” he said slowly. “Shiro is real. And he needs us. But if no one believes me, I can’t help him.”

“There are different kinds of help.”

“Talking to him isn’t going to bring him back.”

“But it’ll keep you both going.” Hunk sighed. “We have the mission to the Galra base today. Maybe that’ll help take your mind off things. Make sure Shirogane gets his pill, form a routine. It’s not a permanent solution, I know that.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Keith had forgotten about the mission. “Where are we heading again?”

“The planet hasn’t had a name since the Galra conquered it, but it’s Ranvik’s territory. If he succeeds in distributing this weapon, it’ll be catastrophic to the Blades and to the Coalition.”

“Undercover agent?”

“Woman called Krolia. Apparently, she’s been undercover for decaphoebs.”

In the back of Keith’s mind, he felt a quiver of recognition. “Fine. When do we leave?” 

* * *

Shirogane was allowed to come with them only after Pidge had threatened him multiple times not to miss his next dosage.

“Be entirely prepared for my wrath if you don’t return to the lab within the next six vargas. Allura is wormholing us there, so you have no real excuse to be late.” Pidge quickly hugged him, and then pulled back. “Be safe.”  

“I will,” Shirogane replied, amused but still serious. His Shiro had always been the master of that tone, Keith thought to himself. Makes sense that Shirogane would be too.

It was always easy for Keith to believe Shiro. He wasn’t good at lying, so he never really did it around Keith. In fact, Keith couldn’t remember a time when Shiro backed out of a promise. Maybe that was why Keith found it so simple to trust him in the beginning, when he didn’t trust anyone.

But Shiro only said what he felt he had to say. In the case of the average stranger, he said enough to placate, to skim the surface, and then he quickly moved away. In Keith’s case, he told him everything; everything except his illness. That one omission hurt more than Griffin’s insults and the coldness from Keith’s instructors. And it shouldn’t have! It really shouldn’t have hurt that Keith didn’t know one thing out of millions of little things but it did. And it did because it was such a big thing. Shiro’s illness was going to take him out of existence so soon and Keith couldn’t handle that.

But when Shiro came back from Kerberos, after being tortured by the Galra and losing his arm, all Keith could think was that maybe the Galra had found a way to treat Shiro’s illness with all of their technology. He hated himself so much for that thought that he buried it the moment he registered it but now he was wondering; wondering about Shirogane.

“Keith. Keith. Keith.” He looked up.

“Are we leaving?”

Shirogane rolled his eyes. “Yeah, we’re leaving. We’ve been trying to leave but you were in another reality for a dobash there.”

Keith choked. “Too soon.” He stalked to the Red Lion and climbed into the cockpit. When the instruments on Red’s console lit up he opened up a communication channel to Shirogane. “Can I ask you something? I mean we’ll be in the air for a little while at least.”

“Sure.”

“Do you have your illness anymore?” He paused. “I was always afraid to ask him if he still had it and he died before I got up the courage.”

Shirogane sighed over the channel. “No. I don’t. I assume that when the Galra were doing experiments on me they got rid of the DNA mutation causing it by accident.”

“They can rewrite DNA?”

“Keith, humans can rewrite DNA. We just don’t usually. My family couldn’t pay for gene therapy and by the time I got to the Garrison, the wrist shocks were working well enough that I didn’t even think about it. I accepted that I would go into space and then come back and retire, but the Galra captured me, and by the time I even noticed my muscles’ normality it didn’t matter anymore. I was back on Earth, and then in space again, and then on Erus.”

“Why didn’t I notice?” Keith asked softly. “Why didn’t I ask him?”

“He must have been very private about it. Plus, I guarantee he didn’t think it would be important, not with fighting the Robeasts every other day.”

“It was important to me!” Keith burst out.

Shirogane sighed. The wormhole was ending and Keith could just see the shadow of the little planet out beyond it. “You have another chance to ask him. But if you don’t, he won’t offer the information. I wouldn’t.”

Keith let out a breath. The wormhole collapsed behind them and he surged forward, Red jetting through space to the planet. Ending the closed communication channel, he asked the group, “Does Krolia know we’re coming?”

“AKA, will we get any help on that front?” Pidge rephrased. “I think so. Kolivan told me that she’s a quick thinker and helpful in a crisis. Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure. Because Krolia has the easiest access to the weapon, she may be able to shut it down or disable it before we have to get involved with a foreign variable.”

“That’d be great, given that I’m probably unfamiliar with the technology of this weapon.” Hunk looked a little worried.

“You’re our engineer,” Shirogane said. “We trust you to assist in case of an emergency.” It was funny to Keith that even though their Shiro wasn’t here, Hunk still visibly relaxed when Shirogane spoke to him. Shiro, despite much of his self-deprecation, had that effect on people. They trusted him implicitly.

_That’s why I would have been a terrible leader,_ Keith thought to himself.

“Great. That’s settled. When do we get to jump in and perform the rescue?” Lance asked.

Pidge laughed. “Right now.” They cloaked Green and sped ahead, landing on the planet’s surface, the other lions following in formation onto the planet’s dark side. “Now, we are here as backup to destroy the weapon, and to rescue Krolia of the Blade of Marmora. There should be few Galra personnel on this base but lots of sentries, so keep your guard up. Allura will open the wormhole back up when the mission objectives have been achieved. Clear?”

“Yeah,” Hunk and Lance replied a second apart. Shirogane and Keith nodded.

“Rad,” Pidge dryly asserted. They closed the comms and left their lion, bayard transformed in their hand. Keith watched Lance and Hunk leave through his viewport.

“Are you coming?” Shirogane asked.

Keith hesitated. “I just...have a feeling about this mission.”

“Good feeling or bad feeling?”

“I don’t know. I can feel him a little, in the back of my head, and he knows what happens.”

Shirogane sighed. “He would have warned you. If it was dangerous.”

“I know.”

A moment of silence passed as Shirogane left Black and walked over to Red, putting a hand on her huge paw. “You trust me?” He laughed a little. “You trust us?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” Keith repeated with more conviction.

He summoned his bayard and ran out of his lion, his helmet closing around his head and the screen inside lighting up with sentry positions and zeroing in on Shirogane’s face. “Well?” Keith asked. “Let’s go.”

As they walked into the base, incapacitated sentries lined the hallway. A few bore the slashes of Pidge’s bayard while more had gained gaping, steaming holes from Lance and Hunk’s guns. “Krolia has barricaded a few entrances to the main control room, but we’re taking the other ones,” Pidge suddenly said on the central comm channel. “You’ll mostly be picking off stragglers, but once you get here, I need your arm, Shirogane, to shut down the base’s power, and Keith, I need you to begin disengaging the weapon. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” they responded, Keith charging down the corridor and Shirogane following behind him, arm lit up violet in the dark.

Keith had forgotten that Shirogane wouldn’t have the Black Bayard. Shiro didn’t even have it for long before he died.

“You should probably check as to where potential enemies are before you rush right through the building,” Shirogane said, burning through three sentries that Keith hadn’t paid attention to.

“Why do that when I have you?” Keith responded, turning around to grin at Shirogane for a moment and then neatly slicing the head off of a sentry sneaking up behind him.

Shirogane rolled his eyes. “Find the agent, Maverick.”

Groaning, Keith said, “Can your movie references be any more archaic? You know that _Top Gun_ came out right after humans thought that the moon was the limit of space travel?”

Shirogane shrugged. “It was about pilots. You know I’m a pilot, right?”

Keith laughed, the two sentries heading toward them taken out with a swipe of his bayard. “No, I was not aware of that.” He fell quiet for a moment. “Did they say Kerberos was ‘pilot error’ in your reality, too?”

Walking a little ahead of Keith (Keith couldn’t see his face) Shirogane replied, “Yeah. Someone left the TV on when they were quarantining me. I don’t even remember what the news story was about. Maybe it was Sam’s birthday and they were checking in on Colleen or they were talking about Pidge’s disappearance but yeah, I saw what they said.”

“You know the Garrison just had to come up with a reason that everyone died. You were a scapegoat, no one actually thought you were a bad pilot.” Keith bashed the key panel to the main control room, the door sliding up to open. “They were trying to cover their asses and couldn’t explain your disappearance any other way.” He looked sideways at Shirogane. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your muscles or anything else. You’re an amazing pilot and I’ll always be proud of you.”

Maybe he said too much.

“Thanks,” Shirogane blurted. Keith stared at him in disbelief. “I haven’t heard that from anyone in a long time.”

Keith huffed. “Well, you know.” He looked back at the room, where a tall, violet-skinned woman typed in passwords and he could just see the other paladins guarding the other entrances. “You’re welcome.”

“A little help, please!” Lance shouted, sentries crowding his long-range sniper rifle.

Keith threw his sword and managed to destroy enough robots to allow Lance to move. “Go.” Keith summoned his bayard back to him. “Help them shut the base down,” he gestured from Shirogane to Pidge.

The Galra woman continued typing, and Keith could hear the walls clicking and moaning as huge doors opened up behind him. “When your friends finish locking this place down, I’m going to release the weapon,” she was saying. “It only listens to me, so in my absence, it’ll take out any non-Blades who get through the base lockdown.”

“That’s too risky!” he remarked bluntly. “How do you know that plan will work?”

She turned to look at him, and Keith felt a sudden shock through his system as he cataloged her facial features and the way she held herself and the scars lining her skin. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

Keith nodded numbly. “Alright.”

Krolia let out a breath. “Get ready to run.” She pressed the final buttons and slammed down the lever on the side of the panel. Whacking him on the shoulder, she darted out of the room, all the doors shutting behind her. Keith followed her, Shirogane on his heels and the others scattering from their guard posts to go back to their lions.

“Fucking idiot,” she said, halfway to the exit. “Kolivan knows that no one has the sense to come after this weapon right now. The Galra empire is too fractured to do much damage at the moment.”

“So he called you back for another reason then?” Keith replied. Pidge was right about this mission being an excuse, but an excuse for what?

Krolia didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said, “Kolivan has always been a brat, but a well-meaning brat.” She ran up to the Red Lion and paused in front of her. “Well?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m coming.” He passed by her and the hatch opened up, letting them both in. “Shirogane, on my six.”

“Always,” Shirogane smiled a small, secret smile.

Hands falling on the controls, Keith arranged himself in his pilot’s chair; Krolia hovered over his shoulder. The wormhole was opening up again, spreading across space and tinting the planet below with blue light. “Our ship is a few quadrants away,” he said. “The trip will take a few dobashes.”

Krolia nodded. “Fine.”

Keith was struck with a thought. The Galra empire had endured for ten thousand decaphoebs under the same ruler, who had presumably ruled Daibazaal for a while before that. Kolivan had been part of the Blades for a significant portion of that time. This woman didn’t remark about the time traveling a few quadrants would take with the wormhole, even though a few quadrants took years to travel otherwise, even with the lions’ speed.

“How old are you?” he asked.

Krolia raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was rude in Earth’s culture to ask people their ages.”

Keith’s brow furrowed. “I guess it is. But you look the same now as you did in that photo Kolivan took of you before you went on this mission.”

“Not every race has the same lifespan. Flies live short lives, tortoises and redwoods live long lives.”

“So, you’re much older than I think you are?”

“Persistent, aren’t you?” But she didn’t look offended. She almost looked...proud.

“I’m nineteen.” _And Shiro’s twenty-six_ , he finished in his head.

Krolia folded her arms. “I’m definitely older than nineteen.”

Keith shrugged. “Galra having longer lifespans would explain the length of Zarkon’s reign. No one else has taken the Galra throne in ten thousand decaphoebs. He must have heirs or something.”

Krolia shook her head. “Zarkon was a special case. Something...happened to him a long time ago. It gave him a dependence on quintessence to some extent, but as long as he interacted with quintessence, he was, for all intents and purposes, immortal.”

Keith stared at his hands. “He could have ruled forever.”

“Yes. But you stopped him,” she replied gently.

Suddenly, Keith could feel Shiro again in the back of his head. But Shiro wasn’t saying anything, only listening.

“We all stopped him. But. My friend died.”

She looked stricken for a moment before her expression blurred into something more neutral. “What was this person like, your friend?”

“Being around him before was like...like snow blindness.”

“Snow blindness?”

Keith sighed. “If you look at snow in small increments, it’s bright, but you can manage it, right? Everything seems dark when you get back inside but your eyes adjust.”

“Alright.”

“Well, imagine being out in a blizzard. You have nowhere else to go to get away from the light and when you close your eyes, it’s imprinted on the backs of your eyelids. So eventually you learn to stop closing your eyes because there’s no point. But then the snow melts; you wake up one day and all the light is gone and you’re still fucking blind but now there’s no point to that either, no reason why you can’t see anymore. And every day after that the sight of snow is flash-frozen on your retinas but there’s no remnant of it outside.”

Silence settled in the cockpit. “Oh.”

“Yeah. That’s what Shiro dying felt like.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. Keith didn’t even know what he’d say. Fucking spilled out his heart to an undercover agent of the Blades who he’s known for approximately half a varga and now he was sitting in a metal lion with her and Shiro was so quiet in the back of mind and you know what, _fuck_ all of this because he told the _truth_. He told the truth.

Passing out of the wormhole, he flew into the castle hangar and left his pilot’s chair with all the haste of an old man.

“I’m going to check in with Kolivan,” Krolia said calmly, leaving Red and consciously putting space between them.

Keith didn’t thank her.

She wouldn’t have appreciated it.

(did you mean that?)

Keith laughed a little, slumping back into his chair with his face in his hands and his elbows on the console. He was probably pressing all sorts of buttons but hopefully Red wouldn’t let him embarrass himself more than he already did.

( **yeah. Okay? Yeah** )

( **i mean i thought i told you everything but i guess not? I guess i’m not over this as much as i wanted to be** )

( **and please stop making those pained noises, i can hear those. You are not allowed to pity me** )

(pity you? How could i pity you, knowing…)(knowing how strong you’ve been. I marvel every day at that)

(i just wish i were there)

( **i do too, you fool** )

Keith could feel Shiro smile.

(i’m getting there. I gotta help us defeat Zarkon first though)

( **well how fucking long will that take?** )

(i don’t know. But i have you to help me now)(the other you. He’s a double-agent for the Blades)(he’s been through a lot but now he’s got us)

( **adopting me in every reality you can** ) Keith thought ironically. That shouldn’t have come out as childish as it did.

(i am going to come home to you) Shiro asserted, and the weight of how seriously he meant that almost pushed Keith over. (i will always come home to you, no matter how long it takes. I won’t give up again)

( **i believe you** ) The fact that Keith didn’t immediately latch on to Shiro’s remark about having previously given up was a personal victory. The fact that Keith didn’t tell Shiro that what he’d said had different connotations than Shiro thought was also a victory. He really didn’t want to have to listen to Shiro take that back.

(good. Now go down and eat something and talk to Krolia. She has something to tell you)

( **how mysterious** )( **go plan your battle** )

( **i miss you** )

(i miss you too)

Keith felt Shiro recede again, but still paying attention. Something about Krolia was keeping Shiro engrossed, so Keith thought he might as well get that conversation out of the way.

Then maybe he’d be left alone in his own head for a little while.

Hunk hadn’t changed out of his armor, Keith noticed. He’d just pulled his cookie batter out of the castle’s refrigerator and started spooning it onto a baking sheet. When the fourth (or fifth?) batch of today had come out of the oven, Hunk wordlessly slid the plate of cookies in front of Krolia. She nodded her thanks and took one.

Keith stole a couple and perched on the couch Lance had dragged into the kitchen a few weeks before. “Shiro thinks you have something to tell me,” he said blankly.

“I thought he died.” Her face gave nothing away. It reminded him of someone.

“He did. But somehow he’s in another reality alive and he can talk to me.” He huffed. “What does he mean? I know you know about Earth, you wouldn’t have known what redwoods or tortoises were otherwise. But I don’t know what that has to do with me or with Voltron.”

Krolia took a small bite and chewed. “You went through the Blade Trials, yes? You know your heritage?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“That knife you carry, the one Kolivan tried to take away from you, was mine once. I gave that to you before I left on the mission.” Krolia’s shoulders hunched a little like she was anticipating a blow. “I’m your mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No fue una buena idea para dejar a Keith salir del cryotube - It wasn't a good idea to let Keith leave the cryotube


	9. i'm almost me again, she's almost you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Almost (Sweet Music)' by Hozier.  
> Shout-out to my sister A, who's another year older today!  
> C and L were awesome rockstars with this chapter as well, but y'all are probably aware of that. :)

Shiro woke quickly, his skin vibrating with the pointless effort to keep himself warm. The glass in front of his face fogged when he breathed, tinting his view of the lab. Pidge sat on a stool in front of their computer, occasionally tapping keys to alter the lines of code dancing on the screen. “Hey, sunshine,” they said. “I’ll let you out in a second, just let me finish this.”

“Where’s Keith?” Shiro stuttered.

Pidge looked up. “He just left. Had to take care of some things on his harvesting vessel.”

“But he’ll be back?”

“Yeah. He’ll be back.” Standing, Pidge went over to the panel on the right side of the cryochamber and fiddled with the disengaging mechanisms. “Old technology is the worst,” they huffed, the tube finally opening to let Shiro out. He held his hands away from his body in an attempt to get his balance before he left it. After a careful step onto the tile floor, and another, Shiro let out a breath.

“Does Krolia know he was here?”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “You think she didn’t know? She was a spy, for quiznak’s sake.”

“Did she get to talk to him? She was really worried.” Shiro struggled his way to Pidge’s stool and stole it, catching his breath. It always took a few dobashes before his body got back to normal after being in cryo. “She thought he would die before he could get out.”

“He might have gone to talk to her while he was here.”

Shiro shook his head. “Not a chance. Keith isn’t like that. He doesn’t do confrontation if he doesn’t have to. Even if he’s backed into a corner, he’ll fight his way out.”

“Your Keith?”

He paused. “Yeah. My Keith.”

Pidge didn’t mourn the loss of their stool, instead sitting on the table with their computer and putting their feet in Shiro’s lap. “I feel the need to remind you that while every person in this reality shares a name with a person in your reality, we are all vastly different people,” they asserted gently.

“I know.”

“Are you sure?”

Shiro settled his hands on Pidge’s ankles. “No. But I will be.”

Pidge smiled a little, but then their face fell. “Has the other me found my dad and Matt yet?”

“No. You’ve been searching in all your free time but we’re not there yet.”

“Do you think I can find them? That they’re still alive?”

Shiro sighed. “If I know Sam and I know your brother, they will have never stopped fighting to get back to you.” He forgot sometimes that Pidge was fifteen. So old for their age, but still fifteen. When Shiro was fifteen, losing his parents would have destroyed him, and here Pidge was, running a team of people from two to ten years older than them and never giving up hope in finding their family. He marveled every day that Pidge had done everything they’d done.

“My mom?”

Shiro blinked, brought out of his thoughts. “She’ll probably ground the hell out of you when you get home but she’d be so proud of what you’ve done here. Colleen was always your biggest fan, you know that.”

“I left her right after they ‘died’. Mom had no one for a year, and I haven’t even told her that I’m okay.” Pidge didn’t have tears in their eyes, but their posture was hunching and their face was freezing as he watched.

“Well, then,” Shiro said, trying to quickly think of a solution. “Why don’t you send her a signal? What kind of transmission equipment do we have?”

“The Alteans were really advanced in most areas, but their transmissions couldn’t get around the laws of relativity without a wormhole.” Pidge grabbed their computer off the table and put it on their thighs. “We’d have to get close enough to Earth to have a short time between sending the signal and the signal arriving on Earth. Radio transmissions travel at the speed of light, so, unfortunately, it’d have to be _really_ close to Earth. We’re talking edge of the solar system close. It’d almost be faster to just fly in there ourselves but we can’t risk the Galra tracing the transmission.”

Shiro shrugged. “If anyone can cloak the transmission, you and Hunk can. He’s an engineer and you’re a computer scientist.”

“We still would have to get really close to Earth.”

“Is Keith’s vessel the only one monitoring our activity in this quadrant?” Shiro wondered.

“As far as we know. Of course, the commander probably has to inform the higher-ups where we are every once in a while, but if he’s with us, he can misdirect Galra command and we get off scot-free.”

“So we just have to convince him to help us?”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “You give him that look you have on right now and there won’t be much convincing needed.”

Shiro smiled. “Good. How’s the rest of the plan coming?”

“I’ll comm the Olkari to ask about helping build the teludav, and Slav is our responsibility once Lance and Hunk get back, but then we should be able to fit the pieces of the plan together.”

“I’m really proud of what we’ve done here.” Shiro poked Pidge’s big toe. “You guys are incredible.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me, Shiro.” Pidge nudged him in the stomach with their foot, but they smiled back. “You still have to talk to the commander about lying for us.”

“If I can’t do it, his mom definitely can.” 

* * *

Commander Keith stood in the kitchen, looking extremely uncomfortable.

“What’re you doing in here?” Shiro asked politely.

The commander glared at him.

“I mean, you don’t have food in front of you. And no one else is here, so you’re not socializing.” Shiro shifted his weight back and forth. “I’m here now, I guess, but you’re not talking to me.”

( **i am personally ashamed to be your friend** )

( **also, how long were you asleep before you actually decided to get off your ass and talk to him?** )

Shiro was very careful to not let his facial expression change.

(i can’t control when Pidge lets me out of the cryotube. I meant to go talk to him, but you distracted me)

( **oh yeah, because my mommy issues are just so captivating** )

“I’m hiding from Krolia, alright?” the commander said, visibly irritated.

(hm?)

( **...i hate you** )

“Why is that?”

Commander Keith frowned and reached for the refrigerator door. “I just...I don’t want her to think less of me.”

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “You’re a spy. A frankly very frightening spy. She’s also a very frightening spy. Why would she think less of you?”

The commander rolled his eyes and took a bowl of food goo out of the fridge. “Make your own conclusions.”

Ah, reticent Keith was back once more. ( **asshole** )

(i meant it lovingly)

( **doesn’t mean you’re less of an asshole** )

“You failed in your mission? I mean I can’t think of much else considering I’m incredibly proud of you and she would be too.” (how was that, tough guy?)

Practically breaking blood vessels in his eyes with the effort of his eye-roll, Commander Keith answered, “Yes, I failed in my mission. Also, how fucking old are you? You couldn’t have said that in any other, more youthful way?”

“I’m not sure how else to phrase ‘I’m proud of you’ without losing the meaning. Also, aren’t you Galra fairly formal anyway?”

( **are you being bitchy for my detriment as well as his?** )

(always. But more importantly, I’m enjoying hearing your voice)

( **you…** ) He could feel Keith blushing a reality away.

“Usually.” The Commander shrugged. “I’ve found myself to be a very different Galra person than most.”

“I marvel at your singularity as a person daily,” Shiro replied casually, internally smiling at the barrage of flustered speech hitting his mind from Keith.

The commander wasn’t amused. “Okay, let’s make one thing abundantly clear: I am not your Keith. You don’t know me, you have no idea what I’ve been through, and you have no right to enforce drastically inflated expectations on me.”

Shiro nodded.

“I’m serious,” the commander continued. “I don’t know what kind of intimacy the two of you had, but you’re the intruder in my reality. I didn’t ask for you to be here, and so you should assume I don’t want to interact with you beyond advancing the plan for Zarkon’s destruction.”

( **intimacy?** ) Keith asked quietly.

Shiro didn’t know how to answer him, but he did answer the commander.

“Why did you bring me back here, then? You could have left me on your vessel to die.”

Commander Keith shook his head, taking a large bite of food goo and swallowing it before replying. “I’ve brought you back before. Very stealthily. You think that’s the first time you’ve shown up in my space shiny out of your mind and left my space in a pile of unconscious crazy on Red’s floor?”

“No?”

“No. No is correct. You are a disaster ninety-five percent of the time. Therefore, as an officer of the Galra Empire, however false, it was necessary to make sure you stayed a disaster.”

“By saving the other Shiro’s life?”

The commander rolled his eyes again, “Yes if you want to look at it that way. I was fueling his addiction by allowing it to continue. Saving his life so he could destroy it more later.” He scoffed. “I can see that you’re trying to place morality onto what I did for you, but I simply did my job. Hurting Shiro was necessary to keep my cover intact.”

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “As far as I know, Galra command never knew that you were involved with my counterpart. Otherwise, they would have been on our doorstep.” He took his own bowl of food goo from the fridge and grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer. “I don’t understand why you’re lying to me.”

“Lying to you?” the commander asked coldly.

“The more I know about this reality, the better prepared we can be when we attack the Galra with a strategy from another reality in which we had far better resources available and Voltron was able to form. Right now, we have a much smaller Coalition, we’re down a woman who can make reliable wormholes, and I’m not entirely sure how Voltron will form in such a short amount of training time. So,” he paused, “please just answer my questions. I really didn’t mean to interrogate you when I came in here, but if anything you say can help us, I would like to know.”

( **i’m appalled at how much of that was total bullshit, but also at the large part of it that was true** )

Shiro felt a hysterical laugh bubble up. (was it like this when you met Shirogane?)

( **um...kind of? We fought. A lot. And then we talked instead of sleeping** )

(any advice?)

He could feel Keith smiling, just a little. ( **he’s me. You know me better than anyone** )

Keith retreated, likely giving him space for this conversation. (leaving me high and dry, Kogane?)

Neither Keith answered for a few dobashes. Shiro tried to calmly eat his food goo and ignore the commander until he was ready to talk, but it turned out patience wasn’t his best virtue when it came to Keith.

Ironic.

“You were…” the commander started, but then cut out. He shook his head and stood up, pacing across the room a few times. “You…you were…”

Shiro put his bowl in the sink and ran water over it, grabbing a washcloth. Hunk insisted that if everyone didn’t at least soak the bowls, that food goo would stick like oatmeal.

Also, it appeared that this reality’s dishwasher wasn’t functional.

“You were so fucking angry all the time,” Commander Keith murmured from across the room.

“Why?”

“Pick a reason. I killed your best friend. You were shiny all the time, so you were paranoid all the time. You hated yourself and you took it out on me. Your team was falling apart. So you came to my harvesting vessel and your arm lit up and you fought with me.”

“Why?”

“You said you couldn’t spar with Lance or Hunk or Pidge. I think you were afraid of hurting them and I was a convenient target.”

“The other Shiro wouldn’t have come back so many times if it was only convenience.”

The commander huffed. “That’s just what you told me, okay? Anyway, you were shiny all the time. I couldn’t get anything out of you, not even information for the Blades, until we were lying on the ground, exhausted, and you had new bruises and I had new burns and you would say things to me about how guilty you felt that Allura had died on your watch and that Pidge couldn’t even turn to you for help because you were so crazy, and how sad you were that Lance hated you and Hunk always had to take care of you. You would say that it was your job, as the oldest, to make sure everyone was safe.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“What kind of dumbass do you think I am? I never told anybody. I...I wanted him to trust me. He obviously didn’t trust anyone else in his life, and it couldn’t all be from the dust. He never talked to anybody else about how he was feeling, like the universe was drowning him.” He frowned. “Fucking melodramatic bastard.”

“Why do you think he trusted you?”

“I was impartial? An outsider? I suppose it was easier, to tell the truth to people you hate instead of people who will be disappointed in you.”

“Were you disappointed?”

Commander Keith let out a long breath. “No. I wasn’t. I guess...no one realizes what living in another person’s skin is like until they’re told. By then, people realize how difficult living is.” He looked down. “You...he...struggled every day with the dust, struggled to stop. But you know, when someone becomes addicted to a substance, they aren’t using because it makes them feel good, they’re using it because they can’t handle feeling the pain. Shiro was using to feel normal again, feel like he _could_ feel anything besides guilt or loss or whatever shit. Pain.”

( **Shirogane says to say sorry** )

“Sorry,” Shiro blurted out.

“Why are you sorry?” the commander sniped.

“I’m not. Well, I mean I am, but _he_ is.”

A glance passed between the two of them. “Oh. _Oh._ ” He paused. “Fuck. How did that happen?”

Shiro shrugged helplessly. “I can hear Keith, and he’s talking to your Shiro.”

“Quiznak.” Pause. The commander suddenly let go of his bowl; it smashed on the floor and shards of the ceramic-like material scattered.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Shiro huffed. “I know.” He went to a nearby closet (grateful he was wearing shoes) and pulled out an Altean vacuum. Fortunately, it was powerful enough to attract most of the fragments before Commander Keith could step on them.

“What am I supposed to say to that?” the commander asked quietly.

“Whatever you want.”

Keith never used to wonder what to say. And maybe he did, maybe Shiro just didn’t know about it, but this, here, now, it felt like something was crumbling under his fingers and he didn’t know if he wanted to clasp the pieces together and make it whole again or if he wanted to let the pieces fall.

He never used to wonder what to say to him.

So what if this person didn’t trust Shiro? This Keith wasn’t the same Keith, they were two different people who just happened to look similar, right? They had the same voice: hard and vicious and then soft and laughing and lovely. They stood the same way; cautious like they kept waiting for the world to attack and them to defend themselves. Except Shiro’s Keith, his precious person, never looked at him like that anymore: like he was hurting Shiro just by breathing, just by standing with his weight to one side and watching him vacuum. Like Keith had, looking at the smashed plates when he found out about the illness and when Adam left and Keith couldn’t understand why. Like this was a dream and soon it’d be over and until then, he had to be careful, because any wrong move could disrupt the whole thing.

This Keith’s pain shouldn’t have hurt Shiro so bad, all of the sudden, like his arm was missing again and he could feel it aching from far away.

“Tell him…” Pause. “Tell him I’m sorry, too. Tell him I’m sorry.”

(did you catch that?)

Melancholia flooded Shiro’s mind. ( **yeah. I caught it** ) 

* * *

Lance and Hunk raided the kitchen when they got back from the weblum. Hunk nodded approvingly at Shiro’s treatment of his bowl; Lance huffed and ate his food goo as if it had personally offended him.

The commander had left soon after talking to Shiro.

“Qué pasó?” Lance asked. “Bet it was boring without us.”

Shiro shrugged. “I got Commander Keith to join us.”

Lance slammed his spoon onto the table. “No me diga.”

“I managed it.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “He means that there was some sort of drama involved. Any fights?”

“Just with sentries,” Shiro answered. “I guess I convinced him because he’s on the ship with Red right now.”

Lance looked oddly excited. “Awesome, where is he?”

Shiro raised an eyebrow. “Probably in the hangar or something, why?”

Ten dobashes later, he found out.

Commander Keith came into the kitchen pinching the bridge of his nose, deep violet blood staining his uniform. “Can I get a fucking ice pack?” Hunk wordlessly grabbed one from the Altean version of a freezer (the ice probably wasn’t water but it’d do the job). The commander sat down in front of the counter just as Lance walked in.

“It’s fine,” he placated as Shiro glared at him. “I know he’s on our side.”

“And Pidge told you that before you decked me,” the commander countered.

“Lo que sea,” Lance shrugged, sitting down next to him. “Is that a mullet? Like an intentional mullet?”

“I don’t know, is your face intentionally that obnoxious?”

Lance laughed. “Touché. By the way, your mom isn’t going to come after me for punching you, is she?”

Wiping more blood from under his nose, the commander answered, “I doubt it. She probably thinks I deserve getting knocked on my ass after taking reckless risks on my mission.”

Shiro frowned at him and he rolled his eyes. “No, I haven’t talked to her yet,” the commander continued with a Galra word that Shiro couldn’t place. “Leave me to deal with my broken nose in peace.”

Lance scoffed. “No way did I break your nose, stop whining.”

Smirking, the commander shook his head.

Shiro turned to Hunk. “Are Krolia and Kolivan on the bridge?” Hunk nodded, stealing Commander Keith’s ice pack back from him to cover it with a cloth and then returning it.

Pidge was likely there too, Shiro thought to himself. “I’ll be back in a few.”

The castle felt so empty. Shiro wasn’t sure if he’d noticed that before, but he definitely could now. Allura had died and Coran had left, but it didn’t always feel obvious. Here, though, he could hear the spaces they’d left behind.

He wanted to go home.

He didn’t belong here, these weren’t _his_ friends, this wasn’t _his_ life. He’d fallen into a foreign country and couldn’t speak the language.

(i’ve got your voice in my head, though)

( **whaa?** ) Keith answered blearily.

(sorry for waking you up. I was just thinking about how grateful I am to have you, especially right now)

( **you’re welcome** ) Keith’s mind slurred. ( **love you** )

The connection cut out.

Shiro found himself on the bridge, and Krolia was waving a hand in front of his face. “You dropped out for a tick there, kid. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Shiro asserted. “I was just wondering if you guys could come down to the kitchen. We’ve all kind of gathered there and I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about the next stage of the plan.”

Kolivan nodded and Krolia said, “Sure.” Shiro blankly turned around and headed back where he came from.

He had to talk about sending messages to Pidge, Lance, and Hunk’s families. He had to discuss his trip with Pidge to retrieve Slav. Building the teludav. Finding the energy to power it. Going home.

(maybe he didn’t mean it)

( **didn’t mean what?** )

Shiro shut the connection off again.

Well, he obviously meant it. Keith would posture and spit but he rarely lied. Shiro had been with him since he was thirteen, had helped him and trained him and ridden down into the desert with him. Keith meant it.

He meant it in a brotherly way. Keith hadn’t had any siblings and had grown the rest of the way up with Shiro. They were bonded.

Bonded.

“Hey, Pidge,” Shiro said as he re-entered the kitchen, “do you want to get started with the messages we’re going to transmit to Earth?”

Lance and Hunk perked up. “Sure,” answered Pidge. They turned to the other two paladins. “Shiro had the idea to send messages via radio frequency to Earth. We’ll have to get pretty close, maybe to the Kuiper Belt, but it’ll let everyone know that we’re alive and going to head home as soon as Zarkon is defeated.”

“De verdad?” Lance asked.

“Yeah.” Pidge smiled. “Although, my mom’s going to fucking kill me.”

Lance exaggeratedly put a hand over his mouth. “Language, young paladin!”

Hunk laughed. “I agree with Pidge. My cousins, though, not my parents. They’ll probably just try to feed me a lot.”

“Mi hermana,” Lance concurred. “Ella me da miedo.”

Shiro sat down on a stool by the counter. “Krolia, Kolivan, can you get in touch with Olkarion so that when Pidge and I get back from Slav’s prison, the teludav is under way?”

Krolia nodded. “We can. One thing first.” She stalked toward Shiro and he automatically flinched away; her rage was a force to be reckoned with.

But she was heading toward the commander, sullenly sitting next to Shiro and looking wholly unamused.

“You are a menace,” she seethed at him. “Going off on an incredibly dangerous mission without preparation or without telling me? Kolivan is a complete fucktard and I expect that of him, but you are so much smarter than that.”

“Hey, stop being a hypocrite, you didn’t tell me shit about your own incredibly dangerous mission virtually alone on a planet with a volatile, genetically-engineered superweapon,” Commander Keith spat, adjusting his ice pack.

Krolia and the commander glared at each other for a few seconds before she threw her arms around him, careful to avoid his nose. He murmured in Galra to her and she put her head on his shoulder. “I love you, mom,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I know, dammit.” Krolia pulled back and her eyes were swollen violet and dripping onto Commander Keith’s borrowed shirt. She ran a clawed hand through his hair and he smiled slightly. “Just…lemme know next time so we can go together?”

“Not too old to be cavorting about the galaxy with your kid?” the commander asked.

“Never.” Krolia pulled a lock of his hair gently. “We can talk about this later, alright?”

Commander Keith nodded. “Alright.” He squeezed one of her hands. They really looked like a family, and Shiro had always hoped Keith would have family like that, family that worked through their problems and came out stronger. He would have been that for Keith if Krolia hadn’t returned.

Krolia turned back to Shiro. “You been taking care of my boy?”

“Always,” Shiro replied seriously. The commander reddened and shoved Shiro off his stool.

“Lovely.” Standing, Krolia went back over to Kolivan and punched him in the shoulder.

“Rude,” Shiro griped, on his feet (it took more than being knocked off a stool to get him on the ground). Commander Keith rolled his eyes.

“You can’t be serious about me.”

“I’ve always been serious about you.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, Hunk carefully averted his gaze to Pidge’s computer, and Pidge continued programming the radio signal’s frequency, completely ignoring the rest of the room.

The commander froze his face into something unfazed. “Well, are we just going to sit here, or are we going to carry out the plan?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qué pasó? - what happened?  
> No me diga - no way  
> Lo que sea - whatever  
> De verdad? - really? seriously?  
> Mi hermana - my sister  
> Ella me da miedo - she scares me


	10. you tell on yourself between every word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Butterfly" by Kehlani.  
> The usual love to my betas, but also to my friend E, who has graciously agreed to read this despite being a Klance fan :) thank you so much for your support, I hope you enjoy.

Keith numbly stared at Krolia for a moment.

Just.

Stared.

“I met your father during an undercover mission,” Krolia continued, ignoring Keith’s expression. “Zarkon had sent out millions of search parties in attempts to find the lions and capture them. When I discovered that the Blue Lion was on Earth, I sabotaged the rest of the search party and inadvertently crashed into your dad’s backyard.” A small smile broke over her face. “He found me and gave me a place to stay, and once I showed him the Blue Lion, he vowed to help me protect it from falling into Galra hands.”

Lance snickered. “Blue’s just as much of a love-monger as myself.” Hunk glared at him and quickly turned back to the oven to set a timer on the cookies.

Rolling her eyes, Krolia said, “Eventually the Galra scouting missions returned to Earth and endangered you and your father. I thought it would be safer for you if I were still taking undercover missions and drawing Zarkon’s attention away from Earth. Cal said he’d stay behind and take care of you so I wouldn’t have to bring you into a warzone with me.”

“Dad just told me that you’d gone,” Keith murmured. “He said you loved me very much but he never said where you were or what you were doing.”

Krolia huffed and took another bite of cookie. “I’m not sure how he could have explained the purple alien mother to you.”

“At least I would have known!” People never understand something very simple until it happens to them: not knowing is the worst part. Somehow, bad situations are made easier to deal with if there is a concrete reason. If his dad had told him who his mom was and that she was in space keeping them safe, he would have been okay with that. But constantly wondering where she was, how she was, why she’d left, was torture. Little things like that ate away at people.

“I’m sorry,” replied Krolia simply. “I didn’t hear anything about you or your whereabouts until Kolivan contacted me about the Trials.”

“You had no way to contact Keith or his father?” Hunk asked.

Krolia shrugged. “Communication across galaxies is still fraught with errors due to the limited speed that signals can travel and the corruption that can happen with excessive radiation exposure. Also,” she added quietly, “I didn’t want to risk Zarkon’s fleet tracing the signal and finding them.”

“They were tracing you when you decided to leave,” Keith stated.

“Yeah.”

Well, shit. It was getting harder to be mad at her.

Not that he actually wanted to be angry at his mom. Keith just wanted her to stay around for a while.

“So, my dad taught you how to swear?” he asked, smiling a little.

She swatted him. “He was the only human I came in contact with. We lived in a shack in the middle of the fucking desert. Step off.”

“Hey,” Lance said, “Keith used that as an excuse for his remarkably limited Spanish. You guys can’t use the same excuses.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “We’re related, dumbass.”

Krolia smiled.

Her face looked like his. It looked like a tinted mirror and he knew her expression like he knew his own. She was trying really hard to believe that this was happening.

“Can we talk about this later?” Keith asked her quietly.

She nodded. “Yeah, we can.”

Shiro was humming in his head. Not on purpose, just in the background. Walking somewhere, and Keith could feel the weight of his (Shiro’s) arm swaying back and forth.

Krolia stole another cookie from the platter and Hunk let her, simply replacing the one she stole with a few from the batch he’d exchanged from the oven. She left the room in a flourish and Keith smiled, looking down at the counter.

“She’s definitely your mom,” Lance commented. “I guess only your family can have that level of drama.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Have you met yourself?”

Lance held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I express my true feelings, Keith. You’re a repressed gringo in need of a haircut and some therapy.”

“I’m so not-repressed that I have another person sharing a telepathic connection with me across reality boundaries,” Keith said hurriedly.

Shirogane entered all of a sudden, having discarded his armor and put on a sweatshirt. The sleeve barely fit over his Galra arm.

“I need my pill,” Shirogane snapped.

“Ask Pidge,” Keith snapped back. Shirogane didn’t respond. “Oh, you did, didn’t you?”

“Shut up.” He took a few deep breaths and braced himself on the counter.

“You were fine during the battle,” said Keith, lowering his voice. Lance turned his head in a show of ignorance and Hunk went on with his baking.

“I was distracted.” Keith could feel Shiro enter the kitchen in the other reality and his form magnetize with Keith’s.

They were one for a moment, and then Shiro moved away again.

“Here.” Keith grabbed Shirogane’s human hand and squeezed it tight. “Focus on me, okay? Focus on this room, on the sensations.”

Shiro started speaking to the other Keith, the purple one that looked angry all the time. Young and angry. Keith couldn’t help communicating to Shiro through the bond, trying to catch on to something. He felt so loose, like the anchor of Shiro’s mind had suddenly sprung up from the bottom and was drifting through space.

Shirogane raised his head and looked helplessly at Keith. “Am I supposed to be hearing this?”

“Hearing what?” Keith asked, the buzzing in his ears dulling the sounds in this reality and enhancing the ones in the other reality. Shiro’s voice sounded like it was purring at him and the other Keith’s was whisper-screeching and Keith couldn’t tell if that was his head making that up or if it was Shiro’s perception filtering through.

“He’s talking in my head.”

Keith turned sharply to look at him. “Who is?”

“Your Shiro. At least, I think so.”

Keith tried to shut the connection down, tried to ignore the other reality. Those two were saying private things and he shouldn’t have been listening in the first place. It wasn’t his business.

And Shiro was saying things to Keith that he didn’t even want to acknowledge for fear that he didn’t mean them.

“I still hear them,” Shirogane said strainedly, his voice going reedy and scared.

“I’m sorry.” Keith changed his grip on Shirogane’s hand so their fingers were laced together. Shirogane gripped back almost too hard. “I’m trying to get them out.”

Keith thought Shiro could feel him pull back but Shiro wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t able to help. Shirogane was a brush tickling the back of his head and Keith did his best to push him down, back through their hands and away.

And for a moment, it worked.

Keith murmured something to Shiro about the frankly amazing level of bullshit the man was capable of and Shiro murmured back, a smile coming through the bond and loosening Keith’s muscles just a little.

Keeping Shirogane back exhausted him. Shirogane didn’t look much better, once Keith glanced up at his face. Keith threw something at Shiro about how well Shiro knew him, and then cut out, letting Shirogane come forward again.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. When he gazed around the room, he noticed that Hunk and Lance had left.

“It’s alright,” Shirogane replied, his tone just as fuzzy as Keith’s own voice.

For a while, information poured between them: Shiro’s perception of his conversation combined with the other Keith’s actual speech. Shirogane’s heartbeat, as Keith could feel through his hand, had gone up until Keith almost felt Shirogane’s blood pumping through his own veins.

Keith knew that his counterpart wasn’t always telling the truth. He would sidestep his real meaning sometimes, give another reason that could have been just as true, but wasn’t. Keith couldn’t tell whether Shiro understood him or not.

It got unbearable, the number of things the other Keith was saying. Keith wanted to beg him to stop, wanted him to stop being so obvious, so transparent. Shirogane was shaking, and Keith couldn’t tell why and he wanted it to end so he could do damage control. He could fix this.

“Tell him I’m sorry,” said Shirogane abruptly. Keith relayed the message without thinking too much about it.

If Shirogane was sorry, maybe he didn’t know.

Keith let out a breath.

Shiro sent back an identical apology and the connection cut off.

Keith dropped Shirogane’s hand.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Keith stood up and began walking out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Shirogane wondered almost desperately.

“I need some space. Please don’t follow me. Please.”

( **he’s giving it away** )

But, thankfully, Shiro wasn’t listening. 

* * *

“Why is he just laying there?”

A sigh. “He sleeps when he’s upset. Just lays there and sleeps. Or he doesn’t sleep at all. It’s a toss-up, really.”

Keith turned on his side and his eyes opened away from the door.

A timer went off. A swallow, loud; he took his pill dry. “It’s gotta be so hard on him. That kind of invasion.”

“His best friend is somewhere he can’t reach him. Except he can talk to him, and that’s worse. You know when they test recruits in isolation chambers, and there are always the kids who drop out after that?”

“Yeah.”

“That test is to ensure that the people going into space can handle solo missions. Since humans are inherently social creatures, it goes against our nature, but it has to be tested for their safety. Keith passed the test just like the rest of us, but hearing someone’s voice and being in their space, being able to touch them, are two different things.”

“Too much of one, none of the other.”

Keith shifted; the voices got quieter.

“We always knew it was going to be bad.”

“When Shiro died?”

“It was bad before. He got expelled from the Garrison and lived alone for a year. He probably only talked to the occasional grocery clerk, for Pete's sake. When Shiro came back, we thought he’d get better, and he did, but this, now, this is just… I don’t even know if he’s hallucinating or consciously hearing Shiro in his head or if Shiro is really alive. But it’s making him worse.”

He paused. “Shiro is alive, Hunk.”

“How do you know?”

He laughed. “I’m not sure. He’s trying to stabilize me, and suddenly there are these people in my head, people I didn’t put there. They’re talking and arguing and I hear Keith, but he’s my Keith, and I hear my voice, but it isn’t my voice. Keith had a direct line to them, and I guess I got taken along.”

“Do you hear anything now?”

“I think it’s transmitted through touch.” Brief silence. “We should let him be.”

Keith closed his eyes.

“Yeah. You can help me in the hangar. Coran is a very good mechanic, but I can’t read his handwriting, in Standard or in Altean.”

Shuffling down the hall.

He drifted.

(...head, though)

( **whaa?** )

(...grateful I am to have you)

( **you’re welcome** ) ( **love you** )

He drifted off. 

* * *

“Keith?”

He snapped awake, reaching out for a weapon.

“It’s just me,” Pidge said calmly, holding a hand out. Keith laid back down, mollified.

“What is it?”

Pidge shifted uncomfortably. “They all know now.”

“Know what?” he asked, with a foreboding sense creeping up his spine.

“Shirogane told Hunk that you could transmit Shiro’s thoughts to him, and Hunk told the rest of the team. It’s proved my theory of transference but it’s really...it’s really messing people up.”

Sighing, Keith replied, “I can imagine.” He was still fucked up, the ‘transference’ wasn’t changing that fact, only altering the details. “Do you need me to talk to them?”

“Honestly, I think it would help. He’s like my brother too, and I would love to hear from him. But it’s your mind, you have the final choice. I wouldn’t want anybody digging around mine.”

( **not much of a choice** ) Keith thought to himself.

There was no response.

“I don’t know how reliable the transmitting technique would be,” Keith said cautiously. “It might have only worked with Shirogane because he’s the alternate version of the person in my head. Maybe the connection doesn’t extend to other people.” He paused. “But I’m willing to find out.”

Grabbing Pidge’s hand, he hoisted himself out of bed and shuffled to the door, trailing behind Pidge and letting them lead. “Are you sure?” they asked gently.

“I consent to this procedure and know all its risks,” Keith quipped tiredly.

Pidge squeezed his hand. “Fine.”

Keith was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as they both entered the hangar. He’d had a dream that someone was heading to the hangar, so he supposed it made sense. Shirogane and Hunk were stooped over a piece of paper, Hunk with a wrench placed oddly in his grip and Shirogane with his Galra hand curled at the back of his neck. Lance was lounging nearby, a good ten feet away from Allura, who was braiding her hair back away from her face. Coran hadn’t gotten there yet.

“He’s agreed to let us talk to him,” Pidge asserted, and everyone’s heads came up.

“Really?” Lance asked. “Are you dead sure? Did you threaten to hide his angsty sword bayard? Because that’s coercion, Pidge, and really not allowed by the Garrison.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “No, I’m letting you dig around in my mind out of the goodness of my heart.”

Allura smiled. “We really appreciate it, Keith.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s get on with it.” Keith sat down on the floor and held his hand up. “I’m warning you now though, we’re learning to block each other, so you may not be able to reach him.”

Hunk nodded. “Forming boundaries is very healthy for the two of you to do.”

Keith snorted a little at that, and Lance sat down across from him. “He’s...not mad at us, right? For not believing you?” Lance wondered quietly.

“Shiro’s not mad at any of you,” Keith replied, holding out his hand. “But he can tell you that himself, I’m not a damn carrier pigeon.”

Lance smirked, and the moment of vulnerability was broken. “Bring it.”

Keith closed his eyes and focused. How did he open the channel before?

Okay. ( **Shiro?** )

He didn’t answer.

Keith poked on the link between them, tried to visualize the bond and let Lance through to the other side. It felt like he was shouting into a void, like he kept pushing and pushing but the boundary wouldn’t move.

“Is he there?” Lance asked.

Keith let out a pressed breath. “I don’t know, he’s not answering.”

He heard Lance sigh. “I can try again later.”

“No fucking way. Give me a dobash to find him.”

( **this isn’t the time to block me** ) Keith murmured desperately. ( **Lance wants to talk to you, can you please put your plans away for a little while?** )

He opened his eyes and let them drift to a spot on Black’s head. She stared impassively at him; Keith closed his eyes again. He sent a thought toward her along the lines that if she was going to sit there and judge him, she might as well attempt to help.

She nudged at his mind and suddenly Keith felt Shiro again, strategizing, typing commands into a transmitter.

( **hi. I have people here who wanna talk to you** ) He let Lance through slowly; Keith really didn’t want to lose control the first time he acted as an inter-reality relay.

Shiro stopped typing. (Lance?)

Lance sniffed next to Keith but quickly stifled it.

(i’m alive, Lance. And Pidge and I are working on a way for me to come back)

“Did you really die or did you just disappear?” Lance asked aloud.

Shiro answered his question in a wave of calm and comfort and reassurance.

“He died,” breathed Lance. “He said that he died. His soul was inside the Black Lion all this time.” Pidge sat down on the floor and leaned against Hunk’s leg. Allura folded her arms and set her face like stone but her eyes were gleaming. Hunk ran a hand through Pidge’s hair, wiping tears off his face with the other. Shirogane stood off to the side, shifting his weight like he wanted to run.

“He’s working on a plan like ours to defeat Zarkon in the other reality,” Lance continued. “Once Zarkon is gone, he’s going to come home.”

“Dumbass,” Pidge muttered. “Stupid risk-taker.”

Lance laughed suddenly; Keith struggled to stay awake. “He misses all of us. He says to not let Allura near the kitchen and to make sure that Hunk should always talk during diplomatic meetings.” He paused. “He says to tell Pidge he’s sorry they are missing another family member but he’s working on it.”

Pidge sobbed once, and Hunk set his wrench down on the bench and sat on the floor next to them, pulling them into his arms. They didn’t make another sound.

“He’s thankful that Allura and Coran are still giving us a home, thankful for their support. He wants…” Lance broke off. “He wants me to…” He shook his head.

( **thank you for doing this** ) Keith could feel how much of his exhaustion he was transmitting and he tried to reel it back in.

(always) Shiro was retreating, he was pulling back too fast and Keith yanked him back the other way.

Lance let go as if he’d been burned.

( **i tried to find you before but you weren’t listening** ) Keith exhaled, letting that sentence out faster than he wanted to.

(we need boundaries. It’s important for us to stay healthy until this is over)

( **but you...you didn’t answer** )

And Shiro hesitated. He was refusing to verbalize his thoughts but Keith could feel what Shiro was feeling: guilt, pity, confusion, disappointment.

( **did I say something to you?** ) The realization spread cold over his arms and legs and neck and he felt himself shiver. Keith had never been so grateful that no one was with him, feeling the transmission, knowing the panic spiking up his throat and scraping the insides of his cheeks.

(...no)

Keith curled in on himself. ( **don’t you dare lie to me** )

(i know what you meant) Shiro blurted. (you were sleepy and delirious, and you always get loopy when you’re like that)

( **what did i say, Takashi?** )

(you said nothing wrong. You just expressed affection toward me and I took it knowing that you were tired and you wouldn’t have said it if you were fully awake. I’m not going to hold it against you, I know you usually aren’t like that)

That was the worst thing Shiro could have said. Keith felt the forgiveness and apology and forced distance through the bond and it hurt so much worse than he’d thought it would, and he’d been preparing himself for this moment ever since he’d realized that he was seven years younger than a high-ranking military pilot with a serious boyfriend and prospects beyond Earth and perhaps beyond the solar system. He’d been preparing to hear Shiro let him down slowly since he was sixteen and Shiro was twenty-three and Keith was a fucking disaster praying to whatever deity existed in this reality that he wouldn’t mess this up for himself and ruin the only relationship he’d managed to build since his dad died.

Keith had been preparing for the moment Takashi Shirogane would reject him since the moment he realized that he loved him.

And he felt so stupid now, so stupid that he had ever had hope Shiro would feel something on the same plane as love, much less love Keith as much as Keith loved Shiro. Shiro was with Adam and then Shiro was dead and it didn’t matter and then he was alive and Keith fell all over again. And then he died again and came back again and none of it mattered because it was over before it could even start.

Oh, Shiro would let him down slowly. He’d pull back, give them both space, pretend like it didn’t hurt the team to avoid his right hand. Eventually, though, it would get too difficult. Shiro would leave and he’d do it because he would think it was the best thing for Keith to ‘heal’ or some shit and Keith’s heart would shatter into a million fucking pieces. Keith’s whole world would collapse because Keith couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself when it mattered the most.

It would get better. He hated admitting that to himself right now because it felt like a train full of accelerant had crashed into his chest and exploded, burning up the inside of his body, and he wanted to live in that feeling and drown in it and never wake up. But it would get better. He had support: he had his mom and Hunk and Pidge and Allura and Lance and Coran. He even had Shirogane here, who never had to know about any of this.

But it hurt so bad.

Keith reached for the bond (quiznak, he’d been broadcasting all that shit) and pinched it closed, cutting off Shiro’s residual emotions from the onslaught that Keith had let him feel for too long. It wasn’t his fault, after all. Shiro didn’t deserve ninety-five percent of the garbage Keith had been pushing on him.

Someone was shouting in his ear.

“Keith? You gotta wake up!”

He shook his head. It felt so fucking heavy.

“Well, at least we know he can hear us again,” Lance said, his worried tone giving him away.

“Keith, can you stand up?” Shirogane asked. Just hearing his voice pained Keith; he curled back up into a ball and hid. The Red Paladin, he thought bitterly, brought down by an ambiguous rejection.

“I can stay with him,” someone murmured.

“We’ll all stay with him,” Allura asserted. Keith felt her arms come around him and he leaned into her touch, being careful to not look up. If he had to look at anybody right now, he’d break down completely.

“The paladins of old used their bond to communally heal when pods weren’t available,” Coran said quietly. He must have come in while Keith was transmitting. “Your combined energy has more power than many other forces in the universe.”

“Then we’re staying.” Hunk sat on Keith’s other side and brought Pidge with him. Lance knelt behind Keith and rubbed his back. Keith felt surrounded and safe and quiznak, the pain was so sharp that he couldn’t tell what was from Shiro and what was from transmitting.

Shirogane walked out of the room. 

* * *

“What happened?”

A sigh. “He tried to use touch again to connect other people to the events happening in the other reality. It seemed to work. I mean, he was exhausted, but no more so than when he accidentally did it to me.”

“And?”

“Soon after Lance let go, Keith...he talked to Shiro, I think. And he just...he just shut down.”

A few controlled breaths. “Are they helping him by crowding him like that?”

“Coran thinks that the paladins could use their bond to heal each other but I really just think they don’t want to leave him alone right now.”

“Why aren’t you in there?”

“Something tells me I’d only make it worse. I started all this nonsense with the transmitting, and it’s obviously doing more harm than good.”

“I may not have been a part of his life for long, but I know he needs you.”

“He doesn’t need me. He needs _him_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line about Keith just sleeping when he's upset is a reference to a fic called "Happy Families" by 0lizzybennet0 on ff.net. It's one of the best fics I've ever read and I wished to pay homage.   
> gringo - slang; white boy


	11. i hold on to little pieces of what we were

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Let Me Down Slowly" by Alec Benjamin ft Alessia Cara.  
> Y'all, I've had an extremely stressful few weeks, but this fic and knowing you guys will be reading it has made a lot of that time easier. So thank you :) I deeply appreciate each and every one of you

His insides felt like someone had sprayed weed-killer in all the crevices, hitting all the dandelions; the fumes came up his throat and sat in his mouth in a cloud of noxious gas.

Shiro had made the mistake of touching that stuff once as a kid. His grandparents had had a garden full of the most beautiful flowers, and they would use a spray bottle to kill the real weeds, make sure every plant had a chance for sunlight and water. He’d thought the bottle was sugar water (to attract the butterflies!) but when he got it on his hand accidentally, it burned his skin. His obaa-san had taken the bottle away and fussed over his hand, rinsing it with cold water and disinfecting it, covering it with a clean cloth.

She’d said, “Taka-chan, the world is full of weed-killer. You must be careful, however, not to use it on a dandelion.”

“Cuz dandelions don’t deserve it?” he’d replied.

She nodded. “Because dandelions don’t deserve it.”

All the dandelions in his body. All of them, withering.

Quiznak, it hurt so bad. 

* * *

“Hi, mom. I’m okay, I’m not hurt or anything. This...you wouldn’t believe this, mom, but I’m in space right now. Shiro’s with me, he’s okay too. A little beat up, but okay. Shiro thinks Dad and Matt are alive somewhere and he’s helping me look.

“I can’t come home yet, I’m sorry. There're...people who need me, who need us. The alien race that took the crew of the Kerberos mission hostage, the Galra, have an empire that stretches the entire universe. Their leader is Emperor Zarkon. He’s responsible for countless billions of lives lost. We have a plan to break his empire apart and kill him, and it’s a good plan, it’s a plan that worked before...but I needed to tell you, before we do this, that I love you.

“I love you so much, and I’m so sorry that you don’t have anybody left on Earth with you. I really didn’t mean to leave, I just got caught up in...in all of this and I can’t leave now, they need me here. I _won’t_ leave them behind.

“Ah...

“I’m here with Shiro, which you know already, but I met new friends, too. Lance and Hunk are both from the Garrison: Lance used to be a cargo pilot but got moved up to fighter class, and Hunk is an engineer. We met other humanoids, not just Galra. Their planet was destroyed by Zarkon ten thousand years ago; they’re called Alteans. Allura could open wormholes with her mind and Coran was an amazing repository of information about their culture. Except...well, Allura died trying to protect us, and Coran disappeared soon after. It hit all of us really hard, Shiro especially. He’s getting better though.

“We found out some time ago that there were Galra rebels fighting against the empire, and we’ve joined forces with a few. They’re called the Blades of Marmora and they’re spies. Krolia and Kolivan are tall and sneaky and so smart; they’ve discovered how to transmit sensitive information across distances unfathomable by current human space travel standards and use this technology to coordinate rebel efforts between quadrants like it’s nothing! Commander Keith is the other Marmorite, an undercover agent who can fly the Red Lion.

“Oh quiznak, I forgot about Voltron! Voltron is a huge mecha made of five metal lions. I fly the Green Lion, Lance flies Blue, Hunk flies Yellow, and Shiro flies Black. We’ve never been able to form Voltron though because we didn’t have the commander nor the Red Lion until now.

“Um…

“That covers it, I think. Plan, check. Friends, check. Shiro...check. Voltron, check.

“I just...I love you. I’m okay, really. Alteans have these healing pods, so everybody who sustains major _physical_ injuries recovers. We’re going to come home as soon as the Galra Empire and Zarkon are finished, and every planet is free of their rule. We’ll...we’ll try, at least. We’ve set this up so that after the battle is complete, the castle’s mainframe will attempt another transmission to you guys back on Earth so that you’ll be informed about what happened and when we’ll come home.

“Please, if you can, contact Lance and Hunk’s families. I don’t want you to be alone.

“This is Pidge Holt, signing off.” 

* * *

As a kid, Shiro had never broken a bone. His muscles would tug and go limp and pull him into the ground but he had never broken a bone.

Sometimes he wondered if the ground knew to soften when he walked so that if he fell, it would pillow underneath him. Shiro spoke to the ground a lot, thanking it for helping him. His obaa-san always said he was favored by the land gods.

His leg broke for the first time in the Galra fighting ring during his second fight. When Shiro woke up, he was thrown back into the ring. He couldn’t remember the pain, couldn’t remember screaming or crying or simply continuing to fight with no outward response.

Shiro walked around the castle once and could feel it, though. It shot up his shin and split inside his knee and he fell.

There were no land gods in the castle to soften the floor. 

* * *

“Hola mami y papi. Los extraño muchísimo! Tell Veronica and Marco and Luis and Rachel and todos mis tíos y primos que dije hi!

“Estoy en un castillo en espacio! Volamos from Earth to the planet Erus en el Leon Azul. She’s _my_ lion, I get to fly her every day and she’s so fast and shoots ice sometimes too! Dios, she’s amazing. But I’m not here alone, I’m here with people from the Garrison. They’re the ones that set all of this up so I could talk to you. Pidge is the genius; they were the person who found the Blue Lion in the first place by tracing its signal. Hunk is our engineer. He got a little space-sick the first few times we went out but he’s come so far!

“We...Encontramos Shiro, de la misión de Kerberos. He’s...made some bad choices. He got Allura killed. And he’s a mess about it, I know that, but it’s really hard to forgive him. Shiro’s better now. At least I think he is.

“Quiero decirle...que yo entiendo. No sé what he’s going through, pero el muerto de Allie me duele todos los días. Es similar, yo pienso, para él. The two of them led side by side.

“...

“We’re fighting aliens up here. The Galra. They’ve been trying to conquer every planet in their sights and we have the opportunity to stop them. We have a real plan, real chance to dethrone their leader and take the universe back. Sólo quiero que sepan que los amo y we’re going to come home. One way or another, we’re all coming back to Earth.

“Te lo prometo.” 

* * *

Shiro opened his eyes and winced at the lights in his room. A stabbing pain had formed behind his eyes and he couldn’t help but close them. His bones felt slimy as if the acid in his stomach had slipped along his arms and legs and sank in, his limbs liquifying.

He staggered to the shower and fumbled with the door-latch. Maybe the steam would help his head. Shiro quickly divested himself of his shirt and sweatpants and stepped into the water, recoiling at the chill of it.

Forgot to let the water warm up.

Alteans didn’t traditionally shower; they had a more efficient cleaning method that Coran had tried to explain to Shiro once to no avail. But Pidge had found a way to jury rig some showers early on, building the haphazard contraptions in the side walls of their rooms.

Shiro let his head under the spray, letting the water run over his face. He needed to cut his hair, his undercut was getting too long.

His hair felt like it was congealing in the water. Shiro couldn’t remember the last time he consciously showered, rather than using the Altean sonic (?) showers to get clean.

Maybe he could get a razor of some sort from Hunk.

Shiro pushed himself out of the water; he took several deep breaths. (breathe)

Quiznak, the pain hadn’t depleted at all. He could feel the tensing between his eyebrows and into the bridge of his nose, and he tried to relax but his body wouldn’t listen.

At least his muscles allowed him to exit the shower and put his pajamas back on. It appeared that the mission to rescue Slav would have to go on without him. He was only a liability like this.

Shiro hadn’t been sick since he came back from the Galra prison. A brief fear flashed through his mind that he’d start getting symptoms of his illness back but he pushed it aside. This wasn’t normal sickness, there had to be something else going on.

Pidge wouldn’t have pain pills; there weren’t pain pills when there were healing pods. And even if they did, Shiro just didn’t want to get up and ask.

He curled up in his bed, pulling the covers over his head and punching the pillow into a more comfortable shape.  Sleep was the only real option; being awake hurt too much.

It was _crippling_.

A few involuntary tears leaked out of his eyes and onto the pillow, dampening the fabric just slightly. Dammit, he’d experienced worse than this; he’d lived for over twenty years with a muscular dysfunction disorder, he’d been tortured for several months and experimented on. He’d _died_ , practically been vaporized.

He supposed it was true: being sick was truly the most debilitating state of being.

Shiro had no idea where he could have caught it; headaches were normal with his level of stress, but the aching in his limbs wasn’t a sign of any illness the others could have brought with them to the castle.

But the commander could have brought it. He was the only outlier in their environment. The only one.

Shiro nearly wrenched his hip trying to reach his comm without leaving the bed. It took a few fumbling gestures to send a message to the commander. “Hey, can you come see me in my quarters? I would like to ask you a few questions about Galra immune systems.”

He dropped his comm almost immediately after sending the message.

In the varga or so before Shiro expected Commander Keith to answer him, he wanted to sleep. If he had a bit more rest, maybe he’d be in a better mood.

The knock on his door came too soon, shocking Shiro out of a brief lull and resounding through his head with all the grace of a brick hitting a glass window.

“Come in,” he whispered as loudly as he dared. 

* * *

“Hi, mom and dad. I know I’ve been gone for a while. It’s okay, I’m not hurt or anything. I’ve been eating properly, been making my fellow paladins eat properly.

“I’m in space. I really didn’t mean to be but I followed the other people on my flight crew here by accident, so it’s really not my fault! They...they’re wonderful people, though. I’ve been really lucky to get to know them.

“A blue metal lion basically called us to fly her, and so we, being the crazy kids we are, listened. My roommate Lance flew me, our navigator Pidge, and Shiro, a former POW, to a planet called Erus far outside our solar system. We met Allura and Coran there: aliens from the long-dead planet Altea. Together, we use the available resources (mostly old Altean resources) to fight the tyranny of Emperor Zarkon and the Galra loyal to him.

“No, I’m not making this up. Yes, I am healthy and of sound mind. Pidge basically is a doctor now and knows enough about tox screenings to beat us all into submission about our health.

“...You’ve probably heard the stories about us. We’re missing, or treasonous, or we stole dangerous labwork from the Garrison. The dangerous labwork refers to Shiro if you ever hear that. We’re not deserters, and we’re definitely not traitors. We’re trying to save the universe from Zarkon’s reign and it’s taking...longer than expected.

“I don’t know when we’re coming home. I wish I knew because I miss you guys so much it hurts. I miss your cooking, mom. I miss dad’s hugs. I’m fighting this battle because I have to, and I’m fighting it for you, so you never have to experience what Allura and Coran did, so Earth never has to experience that. We’re getting there, we have a plan to stop Zarkon forever and for the Galra Empire to end.

“We...we have a plan to _kill_ Zarkon. I’m sorry that I’ve become this person but I’m not sorry that he’ll be gone soon. He’s hurt billions and billions of lifeforms for over ten thousand years and it has to stop. We, the paladins of Voltron, have the best chance to stop him. Someone died the first time we tried, but we’re all willing to take the risk for the sake of the universe. For your sake, mom and dad.

“I can’t promise that I’ll come home. But I can promise that whoever is left after this battle will come down to Earth and fight for it in my name. In your name. In the names of every person ever affected by Zarkon.

“I love you. Forever. No matter what.” 

* * *

The commander stepped through the doorway cautiously, both hands visibly tense at his sides. “What did you need?”

Shiro didn’t lift his head up from the pillow. “You’re the only outlier here.”

“What?” He took a step back.

“You’re the only...the only new Galra.”

“I’m not. My mom and Kolivan have only been here a few quintents longer than I have, correct?”

Stupid. Shiro hid his face in the softness and murmured, “Yeah.”

“I can’t hear you when you’re entirely smothered in…” The commander paused. “Whatever that is.”

Shiro grumbled but flipped back over. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Commander Keith didn’t reach for the light switch. Shiro had expected him to, but he didn’t. He couldn’t help but be grateful for that. “Why do you ask that?”

“I didn’t ask,” Shiro muttered, “I threw accusations.” He closed his eyes again. “I’m really sick, and I don’t know why. I thought maybe since I haven’t caught anything from the humans I caught something from you guys. No vaccinations for Galra diseases as far as I know.”

The commander...smiled. At least Shiro thought so. It didn’t seem like something he would normally do. “Galra don’t have diseases, at least not in the way you’re thinking. We have ailments of the mind, in fact, most Galra have been diagnosed with one at some point.”

“Has he accused you of making him sick before?”

The smile dropped. Shiro didn’t have to open his eyes to know that. “Yes. He has.”

“Is addiction one of your ‘ailments of the mind’?” Shiro waved his hand to denote the air quotes.

“Of course. Scaultrite isn’t our vice, but there are so many fucking drugs in this universe, Takashi Shirogane.” The commander hummed and his footsteps sounded nearer to the bed. “Did you ever consider that it isn’t a disease of yours but one of ours?”

Shiro’s eyes flicked open to find Commander Keith bending his legs to sit down on the bed. “Were the two of you always this close?”

“I had to get close when he was incapacitated,” the commander replied, expression shuttering. “He trusted me enough to get him back to Black when he couldn’t get off the floor.”

“Shiny and...and fucked up he still found his way to you.” Shiro huffed out a laugh. “My obaa-san would hit me with a spoon for speaking like that.”

The commander raised an eyebrow.

“My grandmother. She was a strong lady, never took shit from anyone.”

“Like my mom.” The commander carefully let his hand drop next to him on the bed, making sure that he wasn’t touching Shiro.

“Like your mom.” Shiro scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m deflecting, aren’t I?”

“Effectively.” Shiro’s eyes fell shut again. “This may not be a physical illness, Shiro.”

“This can’t be all in my head, can’t just be my emotions or my subconscious or whatever Freud called it.”

“You can’t leave your bed, can you? The lights hurt you, and you’re whispering. This is a mind sickness.”

“Migraines don’t count as mind sickness, Keith,” Shiro said, feeling more than a little irritated.

“You’re a fucking idiot if you think this is your body betraying you. You can’t get sick! Mine couldn’t, at least.” He paused. “This is your mind transferring its symptoms to your body because it has no outlet, no control.”

“What do you suggest then?” The commander glowed lavender in the dark and Shiro wanted to live in that color because it didn’t _hurt._

“Where could this be coming from?”

“Are you trying to therapize me right now? Is that how to cure Galra illness?”

“Answer the damn question.”

Shiro searched for a response. (do you know why? Can you feel this?)

Keith didn’t answer. The link was a concrete wall that Shiro couldn’t punch through.

(having boundaries is healthy, isn’t it?)

“He’s not talking to me. He probably doesn’t know,” Shiro offered.

Commander Keith ran a clawed hand through his hair in frustration. “You asked the person on the other side of your telepathic bond why you were feeling something? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What?”

“They’re _your_ emotions, _your_ illness. That is the coward’s way out,” he replied viciously. “Galra mind sickness can only be cured through a long process of self-acceptance and rigorous mind training and you’re pushing someone else to do it for you. It is not my job to cure you, Shiro! It has never been my job.” He fell silent.

“I know it’s not your job.” Blinking slowly, Shiro sat up. “Did he try to make it your job?”

“Not directly. And you’re fucking deflecting again! No wonder Keith’s not speaking to you.” He paused. “Or maybe it’s related.”

Shiro laid back down, his head slumping after all the effort it took to hold it up for so long. For thirty ticks.

“People do a lot of shitty things when they’re high. Or shiny. Or glowing.” The commander exhaled. “Many of my fellow Galra, Blade or otherwise, chose chemical remedies to their mind sickness. Some of the higher-ups siphoned off raw quintessence. You could tell because they glowed, just a little. It messed with their minds beyond the power of mental training to heal.”

“You glow,” Shiro whispered incredulously.

“Would you believe that you’re the only person to say that to me?” His eyes were so sad. Shiro hated when Keith’s eyes were sad like that.

“He did. When he was out of his mind.”

“You see why I have trouble trusting what you say?” He sighed, standing and turning to exit. One of his claws caught the light of the opening door and the beam it generated sliced through his retina. “Maybe it’s not your illness. It could be Keith’s, spilling through to you. If that’s true, you have to figure a way to talk to him. If this is just how it feels on your end, I can imagine what it feels like on his.”

“Wouldn’t it be ‘can’t imagine’?” Shiro spat.

The commander looked back, the scar on his cheek thrown into sharp relief in the cousin to fluorescent light in the hallway. “No.” 

* * *

“My name is Krolia, of the Blade of Marmora, a rebel organization instrumental to the plan to kill Zarkon and remove his iron grip on the universe. I am working under orders delivered by Commodore Takashi Shirogane of the paladins of Voltron.

“If you’re getting this message, we have failed in our mission. We are likely dead or in hiding. Zarkon is alive and the entire Galra fleet is on our heels to destroy what is left of the resistance against his tyranny.

“We beseech whoever gets this message to take up arms against the empire. Rebellions are nothing without civilians and soldiers alike fighting back to preserve their rights and their homelands. Zarkon has no mercy and will do anything to assure your subservience so I ask you to fight him.

“His reign has lasted ten thousand years and will last for ten thousand more if he is not stopped. Countless species have been and shall be obliterated. _There is no end in sight without you._

“Please.

“...Krolia Kogane signing off.” 

* * *

Shiro woke up to an empty room and an unfeeling body. It was an unwelcome sensation.

“Lights, fifty percent,” he rasped. He pulled his legs out from under the covers and stepped onto the cold floor with no wince at the temperature. Padding over to the bathroom, Shiro took note of the water on the ground and stepped through it to look in the mirror.

A face stared gauntly back at him, shaggy hair framing unhealthily prominent cheekbones. Shiro briefly wondered how long he’d been asleep.

He needed a razor for his undercut, it was growing too long.

Slipping on a clean t-shirt and somewhat-clean sweatpants, Shiro left his quarters, walking toward the lounge. Maybe he could convince Hunk to make him some food and let him borrow a razor, he thought absently.

The lounge yawned empty, the counters and cabinets shining and glowing with light. The light should have hurt him, but it must have hit dead receptors in his retinas. He wandered to the fridge and pulled out a bowl of food goo wrapped in foil. It smelled a bit old; he methodically shoveled it into his mouth anyway.

Shiro thought he should probably brush his teeth before he interacted with anybody else.

He dragged his Galra arm along the wall as he went back to his room. The wall didn’t feel like anything; not hot or cold, just smooth. Blank. If he could run his hand along the inside of his brain he imagined it would feel much the same.

“Shiro? You’re awake!” Pidge rushed at him but halted a few feet away. “We’ve completed the video files and are ready to begin transmission.”

Shiro nodded. “Good work. The sooner those are sent, the sooner we can continue with the mission. Is the Green Lion ready for transmission and subsequent excursion to retrieve Slav from the Galra prison?”

Pidge frowned, their eyebrows furrowing together. “Are you sure you’re up for a mission right now? You were bedridden for two quintents.”

“A mission is the best thing for me right now,” Shiro replied vacantly. “Besides I have the most comprehensive intel on that mission given that I was actually there when it occurred.”

Pidge looked skeptical. “I have all the authority in the universe to bench you, Shiro. I am, by all rights, the leader of this team and one of the main coordinators of this plan.”

“I will not disappoint you,” Shiro asserted, standing taller.

“I’ll come with you,” a voice said, appearing from behind Pidge. The commander scrutinized Shiro with an outwardly calm eye. “I know his illness better than he does and I can pull him out of the mission if it’s required. I have no qualms throwing him over my shoulder and frog-marching him from the area.”

“Well, if that’s not a convincing argument, I’m not sure what is.” Pidge patted Commander Keith on the shoulder and strode away, purpose lining their walk.

“On your six,” the commander said, making eye contact and breaking it just as quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly forgot about the shit-ton of Spanish in this chapter oops :P  
> Hola, mami y papi. Los extraño muchísimo! - Hi, mom and dad. I miss you guys so much!   
> todos mis tíos y primos que dije hi - all my uncles and aunts and cousins that I say hi  
> Estoy en un castillo en espacio! - I'm in a castle in space!   
> Volamos - we flew  
> Encontramos Shiro, de la misión de Kerberos - We found Shiro, from the Kerberos mission  
> Quiero decirle...que yo entiendo - I want to tell him...that I understand  
> No sé - I don't know  
> pero el muerto de Allie me duele todos los días - but Allie's death pains me every day  
> Es similar, yo pienso, para él - It's similar, I think, for him  
> Sólo quiero que sepan que los amo - I just want you guys to know that I love you  
> Te lo prometo - I promise you


	12. take your shoes off, that must be painful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I finally got around to deciding approximately how many chapters there will be. Only took *checks calendar* ten months.  
> Shout-out to the freaking village who betaed my writing this week. Without all of you, my writing would be, as a friend of mine likes to say, 'hot trash'. Also, shout-out to everyone who reads this when it pops up on AO3. This story is my baby and I am honored by all of you and your kind comments. :)  
> Chapter title from 'Cashmoney' by No Rome.

Keith spent an inordinate amount of time drifting away these days.

His mind wasn’t anchored anymore. He used to be able to know where he was and how he was feeling and whether he needed to eat or sleep, but now everything felt suspended. Any moment now, Keith, the real Keith, would come back online.

Or maybe he wouldn’t.

Keith scrubbed a hand across his face. He got a disproportionate amount of sleep in the corners of his eyes when he went into the healing pods as opposed to when he actually slept.

Allura had him on a schedule: time curled up with the paladins and time spent in the healing pods, alternating every few hours. She knew that healing pods couldn’t cure mental problems but insisted that periods of uninterrupted sleep cycles would give his mind time and space to heal. Keith just thought that she wanted to help but she didn’t know what to do.

Pidge and Hunk had been putting little braids in his hair, unwinding them before he went into the healing pod so that they could start over again when he got out. They’d forgotten one, though. Keith pulled on it with his fingers until it hurt.

“I’m supposed to check on you,” Lance said, moving to help Keith up off the floor. “Allura wants you in the cuddle pile with her and Hunk in a few dobashes. Pidge has to give Shiro his pill and to do some work so Allura let them off the hook this time.”

“Shirogane,” Keith corrected softly.

“What?”

“I have to distinguish them somehow. Shiro is ours. Shirogane isn’t.”

Lance shrugged. “If you say so.”

Keith put some distance between him and Lance. “I want to see him.”

Lance gestured vaguely with his hand. “Go ahead. This is your recovery, man, not anybody else’s. As long as you’re not being destructive, you can cope however you want.”

“Thanks?”

“De nada.” Lance let Keith go on to the medbay by himself. Keith could barely hear his own footsteps on the floor of the hallway. He must have taken off his shoes at some point.

Keith had always been afraid of living inside his own head forever. Maybe it came from only living with his dad for the beginning of his life, maybe from the awful loneliness of the orphanage. And he had; he’d lived in his childhood home alone for several months, stuck in his own mind with no relief. Shiro had made him feel like he didn’t have to live like that anymore, like maybe, once this space insanity was over, he would putter around in Shiro’s house for the rest of his life.

It figured that the moment Keith had found a way to never be alone in his own head again, he was met with a concrete wall on the other side. Keith had ruined that for himself, he had no one else to blame.

He stood in the doorway of the medbay with his elbow braced against the doorframe so he could rub his temple with his first two fingers. Shirogane had a silver pill in his hand and Pidge handed him a glass of water. “You need to take the next one in ten vargas, okay?”

Shirogane nodded. “Got it.” Over the past few days, the time between doses had gotten longer and longer. Four to six to eight to ten vargas. Near the penultimate hour, Shirogane always found his way into his quarters or the training room. He’d never visited Keith again in that time.

“Hey, guys.” Keith didn’t bother entering the room.

“Keith.” Pidge smiled. “Are you doing better? The sleep should be helping you recover.”

He gestured with his other hand. “Just a little headache.”

Shirogane looked guilty and Keith briefly hated that expression more than he hated Zarkon. “Shut up, this isn’t your fault.”

“It feels like my fault,” Shirogane said, throwing back his pill and taking a large gulp of water. “I should have stopped, or let go, or something. Then you wouldn’t have-”

“What? Let our family know that Shiro was alive?”

Shirogane choked. “I just-” he broke off. “I kickstarted this whole,” he waved his hand to encompass Keith, “thing with the telepathy and the transmitting and I feel responsible.”

“Fuck you.” Keith glared as hard as he could until his head reached a whole new level of painful. “If anything, this is my fault. I opened a door I shouldn’t have opened and now I’m dealing with the consequences.”

“And what door was that, exactly?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Of course it’s my business, it’s all of our business! You are suffering here.” Keith flinched. “Physical manifestation of emotional pain, remember? We’ve been through this before.”

“Can’t I keep it to myself for a while?” Keith asked softly.

Shirogane shrugged helplessly. “Last time this happened, you were in a coma. Nobody wants that, Keith. Nobody.”

“I hate to interject,” Pidge said, “but Shirogane’s right. Maybe it’s not our business right now, but keeping this in is physically damaging. And I guarantee it’s bleeding through, whether you’ve tried to stymy it or not.”

Keith winced, rubbing his other temple. “I cut off the connection after I realized I was transmitting this. I wanted to spare him as much as I could.”

Pidge scoffed. “Psh. The whole point of having a telepathic connection is actually moderating it. You blocking it from your end is just as harmful as him blocking you from his end. This system requires equilibrium, or more essentially, a _two-way_ connection with equal sharing on either side. In layman’s terms, _talk to him_.” They paused. “I never seen him...not forgive you. You’re one of the most important people in his life.”

“This may not be forgivable.” Keith took the ominous pause that followed that statement to sit down on one of the cots. “You have any pain meds?”

Pursing their lips, Pidge responded, “Pain meds won’t help what you have. We’ve tried that.”

Shirogane looked shocked. “What do you mean, unforgivable? And,” he turned to Pidge, “why aren’t you surprised about this?”

Raising an eyebrow, Pidge answered cuttingly, “Why am I not surprised that Keith is saying an incredibly terrible thing about himself in relation to Shiro? This is par for the course. Shiro is oblivious to a frankly hurtful extent because he’s bad at reading social cues sometimes; and Keith is notoriously volatile in mood and temperament, meaning he takes things badly because he’s learned to be distrustful of other people and their motives.”

Keith stared blankly at the wall on the other end of the medbay.

“Keith said something too revealing, Shiro didn’t understand and reacted less than well, and now Keith is blaming himself,” Pidge finished, grabbing the empty glass from Shirogane’s hands sharply and putting it in the sink with a clank.

Quietly, Shirogane asserted, “That wasn’t kind.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Pidge replied, deflating a little. “I’m sorry, Keith.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Keith whispered. “You’re right. I said something that I shouldn’t have said and he froze me out. He’s well within his rights to do so; it was invasive and impertinent.”

“What did you say?” Pidge asked coaxingly. “I can’t help if I don’t understand what’s going on. And if I’m not the best person, at least tell Hunk. Keeping this in is bad for you, and therefore we’re going to worry.”

“I really, really don’t want to talk about it,” Keith insisted, folding his arms. “I came in here to check on Shirogane, not to get interrogated.”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Shirogane inserted, looking a little hurt. “I’m not a convenient excuse for ignoring your problems.” He left the medbay.

Pidge put their head in their hands. “I can imagine how the other me feels dealing with him on drugs all the time. So fucking dramatic.”

“Oof, you’re swearing now,” Keith said, a joking tone creeping into his voice. He still felt raw, like he’d been scraped by shrapnel. “What would your mom say?”

“Hey, your mom is the scariest woman I know. She could murder all of us and hide the bodies on the ship and nobody would question her.” They paused. “Not in a bad way, I know she wouldn’t betray us.”

Keith nodded and smirked. “I know you know.”

“Asshole.” They punched Keith in the shoulder. “I vote that you try one more time to reach Shiro. But maybe try to be the transmitter for Shirogane instead of directly pushing at the bond. He had no idea Shirogane was there the one time you tried until you informed him, right?”

Keith sighed. “No, he didn’t. Surface level readings should be simpler to get than consciously pushing myself or someone else through. I just…” He paused. “Would he even help me? He has the guilt complex going on right now, and it’s stupidly hard to get him out of it.”

“Try. We have a very helpful communication line to another reality blocked because of male stupidity and I’m unimpressed.” Pidge raised an eyebrow. “I hate forcing you to do anything painful and I hate the ‘greater good’ argument because I care about you as an individual and you deserve to have time to process this on your own. I’m just afraid that if this remains closed, we won’t be able to tell if and how Shiro will come home.”

“No,” Keith breathed.

“I want him back, Keith. Everybody wants him back. And I’m so sorry that this is happening to you but him existing in this reality, healthy and safe, is more important to me.”

“I know, I feel the same way.”

“Find Shirogane. He wants to help you and I don’t want to find him and deal with his bullshit right now.” Pidge turned to their laptop in silent dismissal.

Keith shot a quizzical look at Pidge’s back but left the medbay, noticing Shirogane’s jacket draped over a chair and grabbing it on his way out. The silver pills left Shirogane shaky, maybe from cold, maybe not. Keith thought the jacket might help either way. Shirogane had arrived with it into a new reality, inside his own Black Lion; familiar items were generally comforting.

Shiro had lost one of his muscular therapy bracelets during a very stressful day at the Garrison around three decaphoebs ago. Once he’d realized, he’d spent several vargas scouring the campus for it, afraid that it would impact teaching or his sim training. Keith had watched him frantically dash all over the Garrison, looking a bit like a scuttling silky black beetle. It would have been funny if Keith hadn’t seen the honestly terrified look on Shiro’s face as Keith walked to the gym. The bracelet had unclipped and slid up past Shiro’s elbow, getting caught in his uniform and thankfully not lost, but Keith never forgot that expression. Shiro always kept his fear hidden away, under constant pressure from the outside world.

Keith huffed. Pidge was right, as usual. He had to fix this.

Shirogane had carelessly flopped onto Shiro’s bed, one hand covering his eyes and the other dangling over the side. His breaths were measured, consciously measured, as if he were trying to calm himself down.

“Hey,” Keith murmured, “Bad time?”

Shirogane exhaled deeply. “No.”

Keith carefully came into the room, feeling a sense of deja vu. Shirogane had turned off the lights; Keith let the door shut behind him and plunge the room into more complete darkness. He blinked to let his eyes adjust.

“Do you have a headache? I can come back if you have a headache.”

“I do, but it’s just a withdrawal side effect.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry for back there. The moodiness gets really awful when I’m on this stuff.”

“It’s alright.” Sitting down on the floor beside Shiro’s bed, Keith leaned back against the bed frame and closed his eyes. “I know you’re worried. I know all of you are worried about me. Just let me get used to it?”

Shirogane hummed. “Okay. Do you need anything?”

“Pidge says I need to open the connection back up, talk to Shiro and figure this out so neither of us has to suffer this for much longer. They said maybe having you there, with me playing the relay, would allow us to see what was going on.”

“Keith.” Shirogane let out a long breath and Keith felt a hand run through his hair. He relaxed into the touch, uncurling a little and laying his head back onto the bed. “I asked if  _you_ needed anything. Pidge is incredibly smart and I trust them with my life but only you know what you need.”

“Surprisingly perceptive for a man who’s currently shiny,” Keith quipped languidly.

“Avoiding the question,” Shirogane volleyed back, the fingers of his human hand finding Keith’s temple.

“This feels like something I need right now. So, thank you.” There were moments of peace. Quiet. It felt permanent, settled over the room like a layer of molasses coating them both. Keith absently noticed his own headache slipping away.

They stayed there for a while; Shirogane started humming, and Keith imagined he could feel the vibrations of it. His science classes would make the comparison with sympathetic waves: Keith’s internal energy waves were matching amplitude and wavelength with Shirogane. They were humming together, he supposed fuzzily.

“You’re going to make me fall asleep,” Keith murmured.

“Sleep’s very important.”

The two of them fell silent again.

“I’m...ready to share. What happened with Shiro.”

“I can share, too. If it would make you feel more comfortable.”

Keith turned his head to look up at Shirogane. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I appreciate that you’re trying to give me agency in this conversation, but sharing goes both ways. I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days and you deserve to hear what I’m thinking about.”

“Does it have to do with me?” Keith asked cautiously.

Shirogane let out a huffing laugh. “Kind of?”

“The other me?”

He tapped his nose. “Got it in one.”

“Alright.” Keith took a deep breath. “Who should go first?”

“You asked first. I defer to you.” Shirogane waved his Galra hand in a bowing and scraping motion and Keith swatted him.

“A couple quintents ago, I had the bond open while I was sleeping. Shiro was talking to me for some reason; he’s got a lot on his plate over there, stopping Zarkon and all, so I assumed he was just mentally recuperating. Being woken up by the bond and really drowsy, and definitely without a filter, I replied to him with a bit more honesty than I meant to use.

“I...told him I loved him.

“I fell back asleep soon after and pretty much forgot about it, but for the next quintent, he kept the bond closed. I pushed and prodded at it, but it wouldn’t open and it made me feel really detached from him. When I became a relay for Lance, he opened the bond back up and talked to him, but Shiro tried to skip out after that. I asked him what was wrong and he...told me what I’d said and started trying to explain it away and I…”

“Didn’t react very well?” Shirogane finished quietly. He hadn’t moved his hand away from Keith’s side and Keith couldn’t tell whether that was encouraging or terrifying.

“Yeah, that’s about right. And I transmitted a lot of the...bad reaction to him on accident. My headache is probably nothing compared to his.”

“Physical symptoms of emotional problems,” Shirogane recited.

“Yes. None of this is his fault anyway, I just need to get over it.”

The bed abruptly shifted under Keith’s back as Shirogane sat up. “Not his fault? How is this not his fault?”

“I revealed my feelings and forced him into dealing with them.” Keith shrugged. “I put all this pressure on him and he shut down.”

“That because we don’t know how to fucking deal with our feelings without being a block of ice or extremely shiny!” Shirogane slapped a hand over his mouth. “Shit. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“But you did mean it?” Keith choked out.

“No. Yes, yes actually, I do mean it. He’s not known for being an emotional guy, is he? And when he is, he always finds a way to punish you for it.”

“Not true,” Keith shot back. “You don’t know him like I do.”

“Since I’ve been here, all he’s done is make your life painful.”

“Half of that time, we thought he was dead,” Keith seethed. “You and I and the other paladins.”

“And the rest? He put you into a coma, taxed your body and your mind. And now he can’t even speak to you.”

“It happened on both sides! He and I both were in comas, we both suffered. I can’t imagine what it was like to be dead or to float around in a fucking void for months without any human contact. He somehow emerged on the other side intact and I can’t be angry at him for that, not like you can, for some reason.”

“I care about you!” Shirogane took a deep breath. “And you are in pain directly because of his actions.”

“Could you say the same about my counterpart? The violent murderer who killed your best friend?”

“That’s not the same thing! He was undercover, he was basically forced to kill Allura. She-” He broke off. “She forgave him.”

Keith breathed for a dobash. _Four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out, four counts hold._

“I’m sorry.” Shirogane pulled his knees up to his chest and laid his chin on his arms. His eyes glowed; Keith had to take a few more breaths. “I’m not myself right now, I shouldn’t have subjected you to that.”

“You believe all of it, don’t try to lie to me,” Keith murmured. He stared firmly at the opposite wall. “I’m personally appalled that you manage to hate yourself even across reality boundaries.”

“Says the man who just described his counterpart as a violent murderer?” He took a breath. “Shiro’s not a good person,” Shirogane emphasized. “I may not be a good person either, but I admit it. You have him up on this pedestal like he can do no wrong.”

“I know his flaws! I know that he’s not perfect. He doesn’t deal with his emotions very well and he tends to throw himself into bad situations to protect other people and to avoid thinking about his feelings. He forgets to grease his arm and it makes this awful sound when he runs down the hall. He tries to take on everybody else’s problems especially when they’re none of his business. He practically has a PhD in self-negligence: he hates making a fuss and I hate when he tries not to make a fuss. But I deal with all it because I love him.” He paused. “He saved me, and he saves me every day, and this,” he gestured wildly, “won’t make me love him any less. This is nothing in the long run because in the long run he’ll come home and be alive and I will thank whatever deity I should that any of that was possible. Because it wasn’t possible. And now it is.”

Shirogane didn’t respond.

“You think that I put him on a pedestal, but I am too old and too fucking jaded for that. Maybe I did when we met, but now I know who he is and what I’m willing to experience to keep him alive.” He let out a breath. “Don’t you dare belittle my feelings about him.”

They sat in silence. Keith turned back to look at Shirogane but Shirogane wouldn’t look back. He fidgeted like he could feel Keith’s gaze but he never met it. Keith hated when Shiro seemed ashamed. It picked at his eyes and carved canyons into his forehead; he was too young to have those lines marked indelibly into his skin.

Keith grabbed Shirogane’s hand and squeezed. Shirogane sharply looked down, then back up at Keith in shock.

“That expression ages you by about ten years,” Keith said bluntly, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Also, I understand where you’re coming from. Maybe trust me to deal with my own shit and don’t blame your counterpart for things that he and I are going to work through?”

Shirogane nodded.

“Nice. Now. What were you going to say earlier? About my significantly more fucked-up self?”

A laugh surprised itself coming out of Shirogane’s chest. “Wow, we’re coming back to me now? Way to throw me under the bus.”

Keith motioned with his other hand for Shirogane to continue.

“I found out, when you accidentally pulled me through to the other reality, that the commander actually listened to me. He saw me at my worst and didn’t take advantage of me. I know how he talks when he’s posturing and he was lying to Shiro about his motives toward me. He…” He broke off. “He wanted me to trust him. And I think I did, in the end.”

“Progress?” Keith stupidly felt his chest warm up at the thought that maybe he wasn’t a horrible murdering asshole in the other reality, and that Shirogane respected that person.

“Yeah. Progress.”

Shirogane bit his lip, suddenly rearranging himself on the bed. “I can investigate Shiro if you open the connection up from your side,” he said. “I know that’s what Pidge sent you in here to do, and once we’re finished, I won’t stop you from leaving.”

Keith scoffed. “Like you could.” Shirogane smiled, and it felt like sunshine.

“I’m going to put you through, but you have to promise to tell me everything you see,” Keith warned, orienting himself so that he wasn’t wrenching his shoulder to hold Shirogane’s hand. “I can’t always register what’s happening when I’m transmitting. Lance and Shiro had part of a conversation that I couldn’t access, probably because Shiro still had enough faculties to block me.”

“I promise,” Shirogane replied solemnly.

Keith poked at the connection gently, funneling a few tendrils of cable through it. He jolted the moment he felt Shirogane travel along the cables to the other side. Slumping back against the bed, he gripped Shirogane’s hand tightly until the tugging sensation at the back of his head stopped.

His sight went fuzzy; deja vu plagued his limbs; his breath sped up. Once the transmission seemed stable, Keith cut himself off the cables, plunging into an amber sea. It curled around his arms and held him steady, soothing his aching head and seeping into his chest until he felt peaceful.

Shirogane’s hand slackened in his in the real world. Keith could almost hear him focus on the transmission, but all he could pick up was static. Maybe a bit of drifting wouldn’t be so bad. 

* * *

He woke up to feel the pressure of Shirogane’s chest against his back. Their hands were crushed between their bodies and Keith registered the pins and needles all at once, pulling his hand out and shaking it to wake it up.

Shirogane shifted, looking sleepily disgruntled at having been disturbed. “Whaa are you doin’?”

“My hand fell asleep,” Keith whispered, “What are you doing?”

“Well, I was shleeping.” Shirogane let his arms wrap around Keith’s waist in a hug. “I found out how Shiro was doing.”

“And?”

“He’s...kinda awful. He wasn’t feeling anything as far as I could tell. He spent a couple days in bed with what the commander referred to several times as ‘mind illness’ and then went on a mission to retrieve someone called Slav?” Shirogane shook his head. “Anyway, he didn’t even notice me.”

“Dammit.” Keith’s brow furrowed.

“Yeah. But there’s always room for improvement.”

Keith huffed. “I guess.”

They laid there until Keith’s legs started falling asleep instead of his hand; Keith got up and shook himself out, yawning. “I feel so much better than I did a few days ago.”

“That’s great.” Shirogane smiled. “I gotta go take my pill, do you mind?”

“Nah.” Keith reached out his hand to help Shirogane stand up. “I can come with you. Allura’s probably livid that I flouted her schedule.”

The two of them quietly walked through the corridors, being careful not to be too loud. It was ‘nighttime’ on the ship; all the lights were dimmed and presumably, the other paladins were in their quarters. Pidge had a cot set up in the medbay in case they needed to sleep in there but Keith and Shirogane wordlessly headed to the lab.

Pidge had sprawled across a few Altean textbooks, their laptop open on the table beside them. “Hey, are you awake?” Keith asked, staying in the doorway in case the two of them wouldn’t be invited in.

Pidge shook themself awake, looked at the clock, and swore. “Who let me fall asleep?”

“Usually people sleep when they’re tired,” Shirogane replied gently.

“I have a job to do!” Pidge shoved the textbooks to the side and reached for their laptop. “I have to get Shiro home.”

“Nobody expects you to do that by yourself,” Keith asserted. “We may not be on your level all the time, but we all want to help you.”

“Do you know anyone who can cross the boundaries of reality willingly? Because I don’t. And that is the only person who can help me right now.” Pidge swiveled in their chair, shoved a pill into Shirogane’s hands, and swiveled back within a tick. They slammed their elbows on the table and put their face in their hands.

“Pigeon,” Shirogane murmured. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Pidge choked out. “My mom is millions of miles away, my dad and brother are MIA and the rest of my family is across reality.” Pause. “I can’t reach him.”

“But you will.” Keith pulled a stool up next to them. “We all will.”

“If I take too long,” Pidge sobbed, “he could die over there. He _did_ die.”

“We’ll make sure that won’t happen,” Keith replied, his voice hardening. “I refuse to let it happen.”

“Keith, sheer force of will isn’t a deciding factor.” Pidge took a halting breath.

“It’s going to be,” Shirogane cut in. “Have you met Keith?”

Pidge punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up.” A moment passed as Pidge tried to steady their breathing.

Pidge had been a rock to everyone throughout this whole experience, Keith knew that. They had taken the bulk of the pressure and the expectations in Shiro’s absence because they had the most technical expertise and the rest of the ship’s occupants still hadn’t been dealing very well with Shiro’s death. Keith could admit that now. But Pidge wasn’t superhuman; they were a sixteen-year-old person with too much weight on their shoulders, from the technological to the medical to the diplomatic. Nobody dealt with loss very well; Pidge had been overlooked because self-sufficient people supposedly didn’t need help.

Keith now understood what a pile of bullshit that was.

“You need a hug?” Keith asked gruffly. Pidge let out something resembling a laugh but threw themself into Keith’s arms. Shirogane came around Pidge’s other side so Pidge could be hugged by both of them.

“Hunk will kill you for keeping this shit to yourself,” Keith muttered, pressing a kiss to Pidge’s forehead. “You know he worries.”

“He’ll probably make you cookies though.” Shirogane smiled. “Maybe if you go now, you can pick the flavor before Lance tries to call snickerdoodles again.”

Pidge shook their head. “I like snickerdoodles.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> De nada - You're welcome  
> Weirdly enough, the only Spanish in this chapter. Maybe more next time?


End file.
